*  LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  Of 


/    **'    >3 

/ 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 


OUR 
SOCIAL  HERITAGE 


AUTHOR  OF  "HUMAN  NATURE  IN  POLITICS" 
AND  "THE  GREAT  SOCIETY" 


NEW  HAVEN 

YALE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 
1921 


Copyright  1921  by 
Yale  University  Press 

The  material  of  part  of  this  book  was  given 

in  1919  as  a  course  of  Dodge  Lectures 

on  the  Duties  of  Citizenship  in 

Yale  University. 


TO  MY  WIFE 

OCTOBER  I92O 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 


Chapter  I.    Introduction        .         .         .         .  13 

Our  social  heritage  consists  of  that  part  of  our  "nurture"  which  we 
acquire  by  the  social  process  of  teaching  and  learning.  Men  have 
more  social  heritage  than  other  animals,  and  are  more  dependent 
on  it  for  existence.  We  have,  indeed,  become  biologically  parasitic 
upon  our  social  heritage;  and,  if  we  once  forgot  what  we  have  been 
taught,  our  species  might  die  out  before  it  had  time  to  acquire  a  new 
social  heritage.  The  mass  of  our  social  heritage  is  rapidly  increasing, 
and  the  problem  of  securing  economy  in  its  acquirement  and  use,  and 
efficiency  in  its  continuous  criticism  and  improvement,  is  becoming 
more  urgent. 

Chapter    II.      Social   Heritage    in    Work    and 

Thought         ......  24 

Part  of  our  social  heritage  consists  of  the  power,  which  we  acquire 
by  education  from  infancy  onwards,  of  making  sustained  and  con- 
scious muscular  and  mental  efforts.  We  learn  to  recognize  the  dif- 
ference between  will  and  impulse;  and  are  thereby  enabled  to  make 
continuous  use  of  processes  which  are  naturally  intermittent,  to  in- 
vent methods  of  compensating  for  the  resulting  nervous  strain,  and 
to  avail  ourselves  of  the  "drive"  of  artistic  impulse.  Thought  under 
modern  conditions  requires  us  to  learn,  not  only  how  to  stimulate 
artificial  intellectual  effort,  but  also  how  to  use  artificial  intellectual 
methods.  These  methods  have  hitherto  been  most  successful  in  the 
physical  sciences;  but  it  seems  likely  that  in  certain  respects  the  direc- 
tion of  self-conscious  intellectual  effort  may  hi  the  future  be  de- 
veloped more  successfully  by  the  students  of  the  moral  sciences.  If 
so,  that  development  may  produce  an  important  effect  on  educa- 
tional technique  both  hi  Britain  and  in  America. 

7 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 
Chapter  III.    Group  Cooperation    ...  54 

Group  cooperation  under  modern  conditions,  requires  (like  individual 
work  and  thought)  a  combination  of  socially  inherited  expedients 
with  biologically  inherited  instincts.  Men  are  a  loosely  gregarious 
species  who  instinctively  used  significant  cries  even  before  the  inven- 
tion of  language ;  and  they  naturally  cooperate  by  a  clamorous  alter- 
nation of  the  impulse  to  lead  with  the  impulse  to  follow.  Our  so- 
cially inherited  expedients  of  group  cooperation  by  discipline  and 
discussion  are  still  imperfectly  worked  out,  and  are  apt  at  any  mo- 
ment to  break  down,  and  their  place  to  be  taken  by  the  primitive 
instinctive  process.  These  facts  may  be  illustrated  from  the  Reports 
of  the  British  Dardanelles  and  Mesopotamia  Commissions  of  1917. 

Chapter  IV.    The  Nation  as  Idea  and  Fact      .  77 

National  cooperation  is  more  dependent  on  our  social  heritage  than 
group  cooperation.  In  a  group,  men  think  and  feel  about  direct  sen- 
sations and  memories  of  their  fellows;  in  a  nation,  they  must  think 
and  feel  about  some  entity  of  the  mind.  At  present  we  generally 
leave  the  formation  of  the  mental  "panoramas"  which  represent  our 
nation  for  each  of  us,  to  chance,  or  to  the  scheming  of  professional 
manipulators  of  motive.  We  should  try  to  make  the  formation  of  a 
trustworthy  idea  of  our  nation  into  a  conscious  process.  Our  idea 
when  it  is  formed  should  remind  us  of  the  facts  of  the  human  type, 
of  the  differences  between  individual  human  beings,  and  of  the  quan- 
titative relation  between  the  grades  and  kinds  of  difference.  Such  an 
idea  will  help  us  to  realize  that  a  modern  industrial  nation  is  not 
likely  to  be  permanently  coherent  unless  habit  is  based  on  content- 
ment; and  unless  contentment  is  made  possible  by  an  approximation 
to  social  equality,  by  a  clearer  understanding  of  economic  facts,  and 
by  a  greater  liking  in  each  of  us  for  his  work.  That  liking  will  only 
be  secured  under  modern  conditions  if  our  social  organization  and  our 
educational  methods  are  based  more  on  the  idea  of  difference  than 
on  the  idea  of  identity. 

Chapter  V.     The  Control  of  National  Coopera- 
tion      .......         102 

During  the  nineteenth  century  the  industrial  nations  of  the  world 
directed  their  large-scale  cooperative  activities  by  two  main  expedi- 
ents, the  territorial  state  and  capitalism.  Both  expedients  are  now 
widely  distrusted,  and  progressive  opinion  often  inclines  towards 

8 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

vocationalism.  Vocational  organization  is  in  many  ways  useful,  but 
when  it  is  proposed  to  make  vocationalism  the  main  source  of  social 
power  we  must  examine  its  tendencies  in  the  present  and  its  history 
in  the  past.  Does  guild  socialism  offer  us  a  sufficiently  varied  and 
interesting  life?  Will  it  tend  to  strengthen  professional  conservatism? 
Is  it  compatible  with  "integration  of  labor,"  when  that  process  is 
socially  desirable,  or  with  the  sufficient  accumulation  of  capital  for 
future  work?  On  all  these  points  our  experience  in  the  war  indicated 
that  the  modern  democratic  state  tends  to  take  the  more  socially 
desirable  and  the  modern  vocational  organizations  the  less  socially 
desirable  side. 

Chapter  VI.    Professionalism          .         .         .         122 

The  problem  of  vocational  organization  as  a  socially  inherited  expedi- 
ent can  be  approached  with  less  prejudice  by  examining  the  profes- 
sions than  by  examining  the  Trade  Unions.  The  profession  of  the 
law  is  the  most  powerful  of  the  English  vocational  organizations,  and 
shows  the  difficulties  and  dangers  of  uncontrolled  vocationalism  most 
clearly.  The  organization  of  the  medical  profession  is  more  recent, 
and  yet  reveals  important  intellectual  and  administrative  defects.  Mili- 
tary professionalism  has  a  history  as  old  as  civilization,  and  its  dan- 
gers are  obvious.  The  professionalism  of  teachers  is  peculiar  in  its 
relation  to  the  special  but  intermittent  teaching  instinct,  and  in  the 
relation  between  the  process  of  teaching  and  learning  and  the  whole 
of  our  social  heritage  of  new  and  old  knowledge. 

Chapter  VII.    Liberty 158 

The  psychological  facts  which  give  political  force  to  the  idea  of 
Liberty  may  be  seen  in  the  results  which  follow  from  the  obstruction 
of  human  impulses.  Those  results  depend  on  the  nature  of  the 
obstructing  cause  even  more  than  on  the  nature  of  the  obstruction. 
Obstruction  by  human  agents  produces  a  different  reaction  from  that 
produced  by  obstruction  by  non-human  causes;  but  this  unfreedom- 
reaction  is  only  produced  when  obstruction  is  felt  to  be  an  inter- 
ference with  the  normal  course  of  human  relations.  Pericles'  con- 
ception of  Liberty  showed  enormously  more  psychological  insight 
than  did  that  of  Mill;  and  the  loss  of  control  by  the  British  Liberal 
Party  in  the  nineteenth  century  was  largely  due  to  an  insufficient 
analysis  of  the  principle  which  they  shared  with  Mill.  The  Oxford 
metaphysical  criticism  of  the  principle  of  Liberty  and  Arnold's  psy- 

9 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

chological  criticism  of  it  were  ineffective  as  political  forces.  The 
future  of  Liberalism  may  depend  on  its  power  to  apply  to  modern 
conditions  the  vision  of  Pericles. 

Chapter  VIII.    Rights,  Honor,  and  Independence        187 

The  analysis  of  Liberty  helps  us  to  analyze  Natural  Right.  That 
analysis  will  show  both  that  Natural  Rights  are  real  things,  and  that 
it  is  not  always  good  for  us  to  receive  them  in  full.  It  also  will 
show  the  cause  of  the  historical  assertion  and  denial  and  conflicting 
interpretation  of  Rights.  The  principle  of  Honor  is  based  on  similar 
psychological  facts,  and  can  be  made  more  useful  by  a  similar  analy- 
sis. So  is  the  principle  of  Independence,  in  the  case  of  judges,  quasi- 
judicial  officers,  technicians,  and  administrators.  A  psychological 
analysis  of  the  principle  of  Independence  may  also  help  us  in  the  diffi- 
cult task  of  adapting  to  modern  needs  the  expedients  of  parliamentary 
representation  and  the  newspaper  press. 

Chapter  IX.    World  Cooperation     .         .         .         203 

The  change  of  scale  from  national  cooperation  to  world  cooperation 
involves  a  change  in  the  cooperative  process.  Our  cooperative  in- 
stincts of  defense  may  here  act  as  a  cause  of  international  hatred. 
But  world  cooperation  is  necessary  if  the  human  species  is  to  survive ; 
and  the  chief  hope  of  world-peace  lies  in  a  recognition  of  that  fact, 
leading  to  the  effort  of  rational  calculation  and  calculated  action. 
For  that  purpose  we  must  bring  a  new  "problem-attitude"  to  bear  on 
such  sciences  as  logic,  history,  law,  and  biology,  and  on  such  princi- 
ples as  Liberty,  Independence,  Nationality,  and  Equality.  We  must 
also  make  an  effort  of  invention  in  the  adaptation  of  national  institu- 
tions to  world  purposes,  and  in  the  creation  of  new  world  institutions 
and  traditions. 

Chapter  X.     Constitutional  Monarchy     .         .         222 

British  constitutional  monarchy  is  described  by  Bagehot  and  other 
writers  as  a  means  of  securing  instinctive  personal  loyalty  for  a 
government  which  is  in  fact  parliamentary  and  impersonal.  It  is  also 
now  described  as  the  "great  symbol"  of  that  relation  between  Britain 
and  the  Dominions  which  would  otherwise  be  "openly  and  frankly 
nothing."  Queen  Victoria  and  the  other  British  monarchs  during  the 
nineteenth  century  claimed,  however,  that  their  prerogative  was 
"limited"  rather  than  symbolic.  The  limitation  of  British  monar- 

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TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

chical  prerogative  depends  on  the  two  conventions :  that  the  monarch 
should  not  veto  legislation,  or  retain  in  power  a  ministry  without  a 
majority  in  the  House  of  Commons;  and  on  the  presumption  that 
the  army  will  always  obey  a  parliamentary  government.  The  events 
of  1909-1913  left  the  first  convention  and  the  presumption  no  longer 
unchallenged;  and  during  the  war,  constitutional  monarchy  abroad 
became  less  constitutional.  Constitutional  monarchy  as  symbol  rep- 
resents the  primitive  expedient  of  a  "specimen-symbol"  rather  than 
a  "word-symbol."  It  has  the  psychological  advantages  of  its  type; 
but  it  also  has  the  disadvantage  of  providing  a  less  penetrating  work- 
ing conception  of  the  political  relation  which  it  symbolizes. 

Chapter  XI.    Science     .....         245 

The  "world-outlook"  of  Science  has  given  mankind  a  growing  sense 
of  power  both  over  their  environment  and  over  their  own  conduct. 
But  it  still  leads  to  the  old  dilemma  of  free  will  and  determinism. 
We  may  some  day  escape  from  that  dilemma;  but  meanwhile  it  has, 
whether  in  its  theological  or  its  scientific  form,  an  unfortunate  effect 
on  our  conduct.  Our  simpler  motives  seem  to  us  more  "scientific" 
than  our  less  simple  motives.  The  materialist  explanation  of  history 
was  till  1848  a  conservative,  and  has  been  since  1848  a  revolutionary 
economic  force.  Darwinian  determinism  has  made  wars  more  likely; 
and  psychological  determinism  is  apt  to  diminish  personal  initiative 
and  responsibility  in  a  modern  democracy.  We  should  not  allow 
either  the  physical  scientists  or  the  metaphysicians  to  divide  the  facts 
of  human  motive  into  those  which  are  "scientific,"  and  those  which 
are  not. 

Chapter  XII.    The  Church     .         .         .         .         258 

What  part  in  the  control  of  modern  long-range  conduct  is  played  by 
the  socially  inherited  fact  of  organized  Christianity,  and  especially 
by  the  great  Catholic  and  Lutheran  Churches?  In  the  case  of  those 
national  actions  during  the  war  which  are  now  most  universally  con- 
demned, it  would  appear  that  there  was  an  inverse  statistical  corre- 
lation between  membership  of  the  historical  churches  and  an  attitude 
of  protest  against  the  wrongdoing  of  one's  nation.  In  the  English 
Church  such  failure  as  exists  in  intellectual  and  humanitarian  leader- 
ship may  be  partly  due  to  defects  in  current  Anglican  metaphysic, 
and  in  the  psychology  of  current  sacramentalism.  Sacramentalism 
has  no  necessary  connection  with  any  ethical  solution  of  modern 
problems,  and  tends  to  substitute  a  ritual  for  a  social  conception  of 

II 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

conduct.  Sacramentalism  also  encourages  professionalism  among  the 
clergy  in  its  narrowest  form.  If  the  Anglican  Church  is  disestablished, 
this  professionalism  may  make  it  a  disruptive  rather  than  a  conserva- 
tive force,  with  an  ideal  not  of  individual  initiative  but  of  corporate 
and  nationalist  particularism.  Clerical  professionalism  will  concern 
itself  chiefly  with  education,  and  may  tend  to  diminish  fruitful  in- 
tellectual effort,  either  by  bringing  education  under  more  effective 
clerical  control,  or  by  maintaining  obscurantist  compromises.  If  the 
twentieth  century  sees  a  new  birth  of  intellectual  energy,  the  part 
played  by  the  organization  of  emotion  in  our  social  heritage  may  be 
radically  changed. 


12 


CHAPTER  I 
INTRODUCTION 


MEN,  like  all  other  animals,  are  enabled  to  exist 
in  their  present  numbers  by  a  combination  of 
"nature"  and  "nurture." 

Our  nature  consists  of  those  facts  of  structure  and 
instinct  which  are  inherited  by  the  biological  process  of 
begetting  and  birth.  We  inherit  biologically,  for  instance, 
the  viscera  by  which  we  digest  certain  kinds  of  food,  and 
the  instincts  which  make  us  desire  them;  a  skin  which 
resists  bacterial  infection,  and  an  instinct  to  brush  away 
a  fly  before  he  pierces  our  skin;  a  highly  complex  nervous 
system,  and  an  instinctive  impulse  to  think. 

The  nature  of  all  animals  empowers  and  impels  them 
to  acquire,  after  birth,  the  structural  modifications  and 
nervous  and  muscular  habits  and  memories  which  con- 
stitute their  nurture.  Men  are  mammalian  vertebrates, 
and  nurture  plays  a  much  larger  part  in  the  lives  of 
mammals  than  it  does  in  the  lives  of  invertebrates  like  the 
insects,  or  of  lower  vertebrates  like  the  fishes  or  reptiles. 
The  nature  of  a  higher  mammal  is,  indeed,  a  strongly 
outlined  sketch,  the  details  of  which  are  filled  in  after 
birth  by  his  nurture. 

13 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

Our  nurture  may,  again,  be  divided  into  two  parts. 
The  first  part  consists  of  that  which  each  one  of  us  ac- 
quires for  himself,  without  learning  it  from  other  human 
beings.  The  second  part  consists  of  the  knowledge  and 
expedients  and  habits  which  were  originally  the  personal 
acquisition  of  individuals,  but  which  have  been  after- 
wards handed  down  from  one  generation  to  another  by 
the  social  process  of  teaching  and  learning.  It  is  this 
second  part  of  our  nurture  which  I  shall  call  our  "social 
heritage."1 

Men  differ  widely  from  all  other  animals  by  the  extent 
of  their  social  heritage,  and  the  degree  of  their  depend- 
ence on  it.  Those  insects  among  whom  one  generation 
dies  out  before  another  is  born  can  obviously  have  no 
social  heritage  at  all;  nor  can  fishes,  or  any  other  species 
among  whom  parents  do  not  associate  with  their  off- 
spring. A  certain  amount  of  social  heritage  apparently 
exists  in  some  species  of  birds.  Birds  are  long-lived  and 
acquire  much  individual  experience.  The  young  of  some 
bird-species  remain  a  comparatively  long  time  with  their 
parents;  and  useful  expedients  can  be  socially  transmitted 
from  one  bird-generation  to  another  by  flocking  and  other 
gregarious  processes.  In  the  cold  spring,  for  instance, 

1  The  term  "social  inheritance"  is,  I  find,  used  in  the  sense  in  which  I 
use  "social  heritage"  by  Benjamin  Kidd  in  his  Science  of  Power  (1918), 
pp.  113-114.  Baldwin  (quoted  by  Drever,  Instinct  in  Man,  p.  80)  uses 
the  term  "social  heredity"  in  that  sense.  Watson  in  his  Behavior  (1914), 
p.  187,  uses  the  term  "phylogenetic  habit"  in  much  the  same  sense.  Wells 
in  his  Outline  of  History,  Chap.  VII,  §2,  uses  the  word  "tradition." 
Wells  confines  the  "tradition  and  the  nervous  organization  necessary  to 
receive  tradition"  to  the  mammals.  The  evidence  seems  to  me  to  indi- 
cate that  some  birds  have  more  of  it  than  many  mammals.  Sir  E.  Ray 
Lankester,  hi  his  Encyclopaedia  Britannica  article  on  Zoology,  uses  the 
term  "Record  of  the  Past"  or  "Record,"  as  related  to  "Educability." 

14 


INTRODUCTION 

of  1895,  a  few  sea-gulls  found  that  they  could  easily  ob- 
tain food  by  going  up  the  Thames  into  the  smoky  atmos- 
phere of  London.  Since  then,  large  numbers  of  gulls 
come  to  London  every  winter,  in  mild  weather  as  well  as 
in  cold.  They  have  evolved  no  new  biologically  inherited 
instinct,  but  have  acquired  a  new  socially  inherited  habit, 
which  will  probably  last  long  after  the  original  pioneers 
are  dead.  In  the  annual  journeys  of  migratory  birds,  it 
may  be  that,  while  the  instinct  to  follow  the  flock  or  to 
return  to  the  point  from  which  it  started,  is  biologically 
inherited,  the  actual  route  is  socially  inherited.  In  New 
Zealand  the  "mountain  parrot"  apparently  hands  down 
by  social  inheritance  the  art  of  attacking  sheep's  kidneys. 
Experiment,  again,  seems  to  show  that,  while  the  charac- 
teristic flight  of  each  bird-species  is  biologically  inherited, 
the  characteristic  song  of  some  singing-birds  is  socially 
inherited.2  Among  mammals,  seals  may  be  guided  by 
social  inheritance  to  their  breeding  places,  and  town  rats 
may,  perhaps,  hand  on  to  successive  generations  the  habit 
of  resorting  to  certain  accidentally  discovered  stores  of 
food.  Some  American  naturalists  claim  that  there  is  a 
large  socially  inherited  element  in  the  methods  by  which 
certain  American  carnivorous  mammals  obtain  food  and 
escape  traps. 

The  process  of  social  inheritance  is,  as  far  as  I  know, 
not  necessary  for  the  existence  of  any  wild  non-human 
species  or  variety.  The  swallows,  or  the  London  rats, 

2  "Until  recent  years  it  was  supposed  that  the  characteristic  songs  of 
birds  were  inherited,  like  instincts.  Apparently  this  is  not  wholly  true. 
It  would  seem  from  the  work  of  Scott  and  Conradi  that  what  the  birds 
inherit  is  a  strong  tendency  to  sing,  but  that  no  characteristic  song  de- 
velops without  training."  (J.  B.  Watson,  Behavior  (1914),  p.  142.) 
Watson  gives  an  account  of  the  experiments. 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

might,  if  they  forgot  all  that  they  had  learnt  from  their 
parents,  sink,  for  a  few  generations,  to  one  half,  or  one 
quarter,  of  their  present  numbers.  But  the  most  impor- 
tant and  progressive  varieties  of  the  human  race  would 
probably,  if  social  inheritance  were  in  their  case  inter- 
rupted, die  out  altogether.  If  the  earth  were  struck  by 
one  of  Mr.  Wells's  comets,  and  if,  in  consequence,  every 
human  being  now  alive  were  to  lose  all  the  knowledge 
and  habits  which  he  had  acquired  from  preceding  gener- 
ations (though  retaining  unchanged  all  his  own  powers 
of  invention,  and  memory,  and  habituation)  nine  tenths 
of  the  inhabitants  of  London  or  New  York  would  be 
dead  in  a  month,  and  99  per  cent  of  the  remaining 
tenth  would  be  dead  in  six  months.  They  would  have 
no  language  to  express  their  thoughts,  and  no  thoughts 
but  vague  reverie.  They  could  not  read  notices,  or  drive 
motors  or  horses.  They  would  wander  about,  led  by  the 
inarticulate  cries  of  a  few  naturally  dominant  individuals, 
drowning  themselves,  as  thirst  came  on,  in  hundreds  at 
the  riverside  landing  places,  looting  those  shops  where 
the  smell  of  decaying  food  attracted  them,  and  perhaps 
at  the  end  stumbling  on  the  expedient  of  cannibalism. 
Even  in  the  country  districts,  men  could  not  invent,  in 
time  to  preserve  their  lives,  methods  of  growing  food,  or 
taming  animals,  or  making  fire,  or  so  clothing  themselves 
as  to  endure  a  northern  winter.  An  attack  of  constipation 
or  measles  would  be  invariably  fatal.  After  a  few  years 
mankind  would  almost  certainly  disappear  from  the 
northern  and  temperate  zones.  The  white  races  would 
probably  become  extinct  everywhere.  A  few  primitive 
races  might  live  on  fruit  and  small  animals  in  those  fertile 
tropical  regions  where  the  human  species  was  originally 

16 


INTRODUCTION 

evolved,  until  they  had  slowly  accumulated  a  new  social 
heritage.  After  some  thousands  of  generations  they  would 
probably  possess  something  which  we  should  recognize  as 
a  language,  and  perhaps  some  art  of  taming  animals  and 
cultivating  land.  They  might  or  might  not  have  created 
what  we  should  call  a  religion,  or  a  few  of  our  simpler 
mechanical  inventions  and  political  expedients.  They 
probably  would  not  have  re-created  such  general  ideas  as 
"Law"  or  "Liberty";  though  they  might  have  created 
other  general  ideas  which  would  be  new  to  us. 

Man  has  been  increasingly  dependent  on  his  social  herit- 
age since  the  beginning  of  conventional  language  and  of 
the  art  of  flint-chipping,  that  is  to  say,  for  perhaps  half  a 
million  years.  This  fact  has  brought  about  important 
modifications  in  our  biologically  inherited  nature.  We 
have  become  biologically  more  fitted  to  live  with  the  help 
of  our  social  heritage,  and  biologically  less  fitted  to  live 
without  it.3  We  have  become,  one  may  say,  biologically 
parasitic  upon  our  social  heritage.  Just  as  the  parasitic 
crustacean  sacculina,  after  living  for  unnumbered  thou- 
sands of  generations  upon  the  body-juices  of  the  crab, 
has  evolved  special  organs  and  a  special  body  of  instincts 
which  fit  it  to  obtain  that  food,  and  unfit  it  to  live  without 
that  food;  so  man  has  evolved,  and  is  still  evolving,  cer- 
tain modifications  of  structure  and  instinct,  which,  while 

3  This  statement  does  not,  of  course,  involve  any  Lamarckian  assump- 
tion of  the  biological  inheritability  of  acquired  characteristics.  It  is  only 
necessary  to  assume  (a)  that  those  families  which  were  more  able  to 
acquire  and  hand  down  social  heritage  would  tend  to  survive,  and  (b) 
that  those  parts  of  our  bodily  and  nervous  structure  which  the  existence 
of  social  heritage  rendered  unnecessary  or  less  necessary  for  survival 
would  tend  to  degenerate. 

17 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

they  increase  his  power  of  acquiring  and  using  social 
heritage,  also  increase  his  dependence  on  it. 

Some  of  the  modifications  are  general  changes  in  his 
instincts,  which  make  him  more  able  to  learn  and  to  teach. 
Man,  as  compared  with  other  mammals,  has  a  much 
wider  and  more  untiring  curiosity,  and  a  greater  power 
of  responding  to  suggestion  and  of  forming  new  muscular 
and  nervous  habits.  Human  beings  seem  also  to  have  an 
instinctive  impulse,  intermittent  and  varying  greatly  in  in- 
dividuals, to  teach.  Even  more  important  than  these  gen- 
eral changes  is  the  evolution  of  the  instinct  of  speech,  and 
the  corresponding  structural  modifications  of  the  speech- 
organs  in  the  mouth  and  throat  and  brain.  Men  for  many 
thousand  generations  have  accumulated  conventional  lan- 
guage-systems, and  have  been  increasingly  dependent  on 
their  use.  We  have,  therefore,  evolved  a  special  instinct, 
impelling  us  to  learn  and  use  conventional  words.  Any- 
one who  has  watched  a  child  during  its  second  year  will 
see  that  this  instinct  is  as  definite  as  that  which  impels 
sacculina  to  settle  on  a  crab;  and  that,  if  there  were  no 
language  present  for  the  child  to  learn,  the  speech-instinct 
would  be  as  meaningless  and  baffled  as  the  instinct  of 
sacculina  when  it  finds  no  crab. 

We  can  watch,  to-day,  certain  slow  tendencies  in  the 
further  evolution  of  this  parasitic  relation  of  man  to  his 
social  heritage.  Families  with  bad  teeth  or  very  short 
sight  are  enabled  to  live  and  beget  children  by  the  socially 
inherited  inventions  of  false  teeth  and  spectacles.  Women 
whose  children  would  be  born  dead  or  would  die  for  want 
of  milk,  are  enabled  by  the  arts  of  midwifery  and  artificial 
feeding  to  bring  up  their  young;  and  our  natural  strength 
of  teeth,  excellence  of  sight,  and  ease  in  bearing  and  suck- 

18 


INTRODUCTION 

ling,  are  apparently  beginning  to  decline;  though  civilized 
man,  when  his  health  has  been  preserved  by  the  art  of 
medicine,  and  his  sight  has  been  corrected  by  the  art  of 
optics,  is,  on  the  average,  much  stronger,  more  efficient, 
and  longer-lived  than  the  savage. 

During  the  last  two  centuries  that  part  of  the  social 
heritage  of  mankind  which  consists  of  the  applied  indus- 
trial sciences  has  been  multiplied  many  times.  This  proc- 
ess is  too  recent  to  have  produced  obvious  biological 
effects  within  any  given  variety  of  the  human  species; 
but  it  has  already  produced  an  important  change  in  the 
proportionate  numbers  of  the  different  human  varieties. 
A  much  greater  proportion  of  the  human  species  than  was 
the  case  two  centuries  ago,  now  belong  to  those  European 
breeding-stocks  whose  mental  elasticity  and  power  of 
forming  habits  of  sustained  industry  have  so  far  enabled 
them  to  acquire  most  easily,  and  exploit  most  fully,  the 
industrial  methods  which  depend  on  mechanical  energy. 
Perhaps,  after  a  few  more  generations,  the  yellow  races 
may  prove  themselves  to  be  even  more  fitted  biologically 
for  modern  industrial  methods,  and  may  be  found  to  have 
increased  in  a  still  larger  proportion.  But  the  growth  of 
the  applied  industrial  sciences  is  only  part  of  an  enormous 
recent  increase  in  the  accumulated  knowledge  on  which 
modern  civilization  and  the  size  of  modern  populations 
depend.  In  twenty  years  an  encyclopaedia  is  now  obso- 
lete; and  this  increase  is  constantly  adding  to  our  diffi- 
culty in  handing  down  our  social  heritage  from  one  gener- 
ation to  the  next.  The  difficulty  has  been  partly  met 
by  the  devices  of  writing  and  printing  and  cataloguing, 
which  enable  us  to  keep  knowledge,  when  once  acquired, 
ready  for  use,  without  the  necessity  that  anyone  should 

19 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

actually  remember  it.  It  has  been  partly  met  by  com- 
pulsory education,  and  by  a  constant  increase  in  the 
length  of  the  average  educational  course.  Education,  in- 
deed, has  in  all  civilized  countries  already  reached  a 
point  where  it  is  very  hard  to  find  a  sufficiency  of  quali- 
fied teachers;  and  the  possibility  has  already  to  be  faced 
that  the  burden  of  learning  and  teaching  may  prove  too 
great  to  be  consistent  with  a  harmonious  and  happy  life. 
But  the  most  effective,  as  it  is,  in  some  respects,  the  most 
dangerous,  means  of  dealing  with  the  growing  accumula- 
tion of  our  knowledge  has  been  the  division  and  subdivi- 
sion of  knowledge  and  function.  Only  one  man  in  a  mil- 
lion may  now  acquire  some  piece  of  knowledge  or  skill  on 
which  the  safety  of  all  the  rest  depends.  The  members 
of  almost  any  profession  or  skilled  craft  can,  therefore, 
if  they  agree  to  withhold  their  services,  "hold  up"  much 
of  the  social  and  economic  life  of  their  nation;  and  I  shall 
discuss  in  a  later  chapter4  the  influence  of  this  fact  on  the 
social  organization  of  a  modern  industrial  nation. 

The  problem,  however,  of  social  inheritance  does  not 
simply  consist  in  the  difficulty  of  handing  down  a  steadily 
growing  accumulation  of  arts  and  sciences,  and  organizing 
its  use.  Each  generation,  if  it  is  to  live  happily  and  har- 
moniously, or  even  is  to  avoid  acute  suffering,  must  adapt 
to  its  present  needs  the  social  heritage  which  it  received 
from  the  preceding  generation.  The  exhaustion  of  an  old 
source  of  supply  of  food  or  raw  materials,  the  appearance 
of  a  new  disease,  or  an  increase  of  population,  may,  of  it- 
self, make  obsolete  old  arts  and  sciences  and  customs, 
and  make  new  discoveries  necessary.  A  new  discovery, 
again,  like  that  of  printing,  or  the  compass,  or  steam,  or 

4  Chap.  V. 

20 


INTRODUCTION 

gunpowder,  or  the  microscope,  or  representation  by  elec- 
tion, or  biblical  criticism,  or  of  such  ideas  as  nationality 
or  socialism,  may  compel  the  readjustment  of  tradition  in 
a  hundred  ways.  And,  side  by  side  with  this  recurrent 
necessity  of  readjustment,  is  the  continuous  pressure  of 
human  curiosity,  and  of  the  human  creative  instincts, 
impelling  the  abler  members  of  each  generation  to  hand 
on  to  their  children  more  than  they  received  from  their 
own  parents.  This  bursting  of  old  bottles  by  new  wine 
has,  in  the  history  of  mankind,  usually  been  a  slow  and 
uncertain  process.  In  this  or  that  region  the  admitted 
failure  of  some  old  tradition,  or  a  new  idea  put  forward 
by  some  thinker  or  group  of  thinkers,  leads  to  detailed 
local  changes  which  slowly  spread  to  other  communities. 
But  sometimes,  as  in  the  Athens  of  Pericles  and  Socrates, 
or  in  Italy  of  the  Renaissance,  or  France  of  the  Revolu- 
tion, a  wide  and  conscious  effort  has  been  made  to  survey 
the  whole  field  of  our  social  heritage,  and  to  bring  the  old 
into  systematic  relation  with  the  new.  Such  a  wide  and 
conscious  effort  of  "reconstruction"  may  be  found  by 
future  historians  to  have  followed,  after  an  interval  for 
recovery  from  nervous  exhaustion,  the  world  war  of 
1914-1918.  If  reconstruction  is  to  be  successful,  new 
knowledge,  the  discovery  of  hitherto  unknown  relations 
of  cause  and  effect,  will  in  some  cases  be  required.  In 
other  cases  knowledge  already  accumulated  must  be  ap- 
plied by  newly  invented  expedients  to  new  problems. 
Sometimes  what  will  be  needed  is  an  alteration  of  the  pro- 
portion of  the  limited  learning-power  of  the  growing  gen- 
eration allotted  to  different  types  of  study,  and  of  the 
emphasis  given  in  education  to  this  or  that  element  in  the 
past  experience  of  mankind.  Sometimes  we  shall  have 

21 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

to  make  the  painful  effort  of  unlearning  what  we  have 
been  taught,  and  of  breaking  intellectual  and  emotional 
habits. 

This  book  is  an  attempt  to  survey  our  relation  to  our 
social  heritage  in  a  single,  though,  as  I  believe,  a  very 
important  section.  I  shall  hardly  touch,  for  instance,  on 
the  huge  subject  of  the  application  of  the  physical  sci- 
ences to  our  new  world-problems.  Even  in  the  human 
sciences  I  shall  refer  only  incidentally  to  the  eugenic 
problem  of  restoring  or  improving  our  biological  inherit- 
ance, so  grievously  injured  by  the  dysgenic  effects  of  the 
war.  The  section  of  our  social  heritage  with  which  I  shall 
deal  will  be  the  ideas,  habits,  and  institutions  directly 
concerned  in  the  political,  economic,  and  social  organiza- 
tion of  those  modern  communities  which  constitute  that 
which  I  called  in  1914  "The  Great  Society." 

I  am  well  aware  of  the  difficulties  and  risks  of  the 
task  in  which  I  shall  ask  my  readers  to  cooperate 
with  me.  Every  general  survey  of  our  social  herit- 
age must  start  from  the  vision  of  a  single  human  mind. 
But  no  single  mind  can  see  more  than  a  thousandth  part 
of  the  relevant  facts  even  of  a  section  of  that  heritage. 
A  tradition  which  seems  to  any  one  of  us  useless  or  harm- 
ful may  have  causes  for  its  existence  of  which  we  are  ig- 
norant. The  social  heritage  of  any  race  or  people,  the 
literature  or  domestic  economy  of  China,  or  India,  or 
Palestine,  or  Norway,  or  the  governments  or  educational 
systems  of  Italy,  or  Japan,  or  America,  may  have  become 
subtly  adapted  to  racial  or  climatic  facts  which  do  not 
exist  elsewhere.  A  change  which  in  one  country  is  easy, 
may,  in  another  country,  require  the  pulling  down  of 
firmly  established  institutions.  We  all  feel,  indeed,  in 

22 


INTRODUCTION 

1920,  much  more  humble,  when  approaching  the  problem 
of  social  and  intellectual  reconstruction,  than  did  the  fol- 
lowers of  Rousseau  or  Adam  Smith  before  the  French 
Revolution,  or  the  followers  of  Bentham,  or  Godwin,  or 
Hegel,  or  Mazzini,  after  the  world  war  that  ended  in  1815. 
But  the  urgency  of  our  task  is  greater.  The  new  fact  of 
modern  industrial  organization  is  spreading  over  the 
earth,  and  we  have  learnt  that  the  dangers  arising  from 
that  fact  are  equally  universal.  Unless,  therefore,  an 
attempt  is  now  made,  in  many  countries  and  by  many 
thinkers,  to  see  our  socially  inherited  ways  of  living  and 
thinking  as  a  whole,  the  nations  of  the  earth,  confused 
and  embittered  by  the  events  of  1914-1920,  may  soon  be 
compelled  to  witness — this  time  without  hope  or  illusion 
— another  and  more  destructive  stage  in  the  suicide  of 
civilization. 


CHAPTER  II 

SOCIAL  HERITAGE  IN  WORK  AND 
THOUGHT 


IN  this  chapter  I  shall  deal  with  sustained  muscular 
effort,  and  sustained  intellectual  effort.  I  shall  argue 
that  both  these  forms  of  human  behavior  are  largely 
dependent  on  the  process  of  social  inheritance;  and  that 
we  shall  be  most  likely  to  increase  our  success  in  work- 
ing and  thinking  if  we  clearly  recognize  that  dependence 
and  its  consequences.  Both  manual  and  mental  effort  can 
be  studied  in  the  individual  human  being,  looked  on  as 
isolated  from  his  fellows;  and  I  can,  therefore,  discuss 
them  before  I  consider  the  various  socially  inherited 
forms  of  cooperation  among  human  beings,  in  groups,  or 
nations,  or  world-relationships. 

Sustained  muscular  and  mental  effort  are  alike  in  the 
fact  that  they  are  dependent  on  the  existence  of  the  self- 
conscious  will,  which  itself  is  mainly  a  product  of  social 
inheritance.  We  know  little  or  nothing  of  the  conscious- 
ness of  non-human  animals,  but  anyone  who  observes  the 
behavior  of  a  wild  mammal  may  guess  that  it  is  not  aware 
of  any  "self,"  separable  from  and  more  permanent  than 

24 


SOCIAL  HERITAGE  IN  WORK  AND  THOUGHT 

the  impulse  of  the  moment.  Fear,  or  anger,  or  sex-love, 
or  the  hunting  impulse,  are,  one  supposes,  while  they  pre- 
vail, inseparable  parts  of  the  animal's  self.  Two  impulses, 
fear,  for  instance,  and  curiosity,  may,  of  course,  conflict. 
But  as  one  watches  a  frightened  and  curious  rabbit,  one 
infers  that  it  does  not  feel  either  that  one  of  the  two  im- 
pulses is  more  especially  its  "self"  than  the  other,  or  that 
a  "self"  exists  apart  from  both  of  them.  Primitive  man 
may  have  stood  in  that  respect  somewhere  between  the 
unself-consciousness  of  the  higher  mammals  and  the  self- 
consciousness  of  civilized  man.  Civilized  man  is  taught 
to  separate  in  consciousness  his  "self"  and  his  "will"  from 
his  less  permanent  memories  and  impulses,  by  an  educa- 
tional process  which  begins  even  before  the  power  of 
speech  has  developed.  The  youngest  infant  is  encouraged 
by  signs  and  non-linguistic  sounds  to  make  certain  self- 
directed  efforts.  A  more  definite  stage  starts  with  the 
acquirement  of  language.  As  soon  as  a  fact  of  conscious- 
ness can  be  named,  it  can  be  separated  from  the  namer. 
The  original  invention  of  words  like  "will"  or  "try"  must 
therefore  have  formed  a  new  departure  point  in  human 
behavior.  They  made  it  infinitely  easier  to  recognize  the 
feeling  of  self-conscious  effort,  to  stimulate  that  feeling 
voluntarily,  and  to  maintain  it.1 

Now  the  degree  of  control  that  can  be  exercised  by  the 

1 1  watched,  some  years  ago,  a  small  experiment  in  the  combined 
process  of  teaching  the  meaning  of  a  word  and  stimulating  a  self-con- 
scious effort.  A  little  girl  of  perhaps  five  years  old  had  formed  a  habit 
of  biting  her  hair  as  she  went  to  sleep.  She  was  told  to  "try"  to  stop  it, 
and  she  asked  how  she  was  to  do  so.  She  was  told  that  her  "will"  would 
help  her.  Next  morning  she  came  down  and  said  that  her  "will"  told 
her  to  go  on  biting.  In  a  few  days  she  apparently  learnt  to  distinguish 
between  "will"  as  conscious  impulse,  and  "will"  as  self-conscious  effort. 

25 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

self-conscious  will  over  the  different  factors  in  human 
behavior  varies  with  the  earliness  or  lateness  in  biological 
origin  of  those  factors.  Our  will  exercises  very  little  di- 
rect control  over  the  simpler  physiological  reactions, 
heart-beat,  digestion,  etc.,  which  appeared  earliest  in  the 
evolutionary  history  of  mankind,  which  are  mainly  sub- 
conscious, and  which  we  share  with  many  of  the  simplest 
animals.  Our  will  has  more  direct  control  over  the  more 
conscious  "instincts,"  and  over  those  movements  of  the 
sense  organs  and  the  muscles  which  are  the  normal  exter- 
nal manifestations  of  "instinctive"  behavior.  It  has  most 
control  over  the  highly  conscious  process  of  attention,  and 
over  certain  other  factors  in  that  behavior  of  the  intellect 
which  is  the  latest  product  of  evolution.2  And  this  grada- 
tion from  our  "lower"  and  less  conscious  physiological 
reactions  up  through  "instinctive"  behavior  to  our 
"higher,"  more  conscious  activities,  is  not  only  a  grada- 
tion from  that  which  is  earlier  to  that  which  is  later  in 
evolution,  but  also  to  a  large  extent  a  gradation  from 
that  which  was  evolved  to  meet  continuous  needs  to  that 
which  was  evolved  to  meet  our  occasional  needs.  All 
vertebrate  animals  breathe  water  or  air,  circulate  their 
body-fluids,  and  digest  food,  by  continuous  or  prolonged 
repetitions  of  monotonous  external  or  internal  move- 
ments. These  movements  do  not  soon  create  fatigue,  nor 
do  the  pecking  or  browsing  movements  of  many  birds  or 
mammals  while  obtaining  food,  though  fatigue  soon  fol- 

2  See  my  Human  Nature  in  Politics,  Part  I,  Chap.  I.  The  limited  di- 
rect control  of  the  will  is,  however,  extended  by  the  fact  that  self-con- 
scious effort  can  often  produce  sympathetic  effects  on  our  subconscious 
processes.  Voluntary  muscular  exercise,  or  the  determination  to  be 
cheerful,  will  improve  digestion,  and  conscious  attention  will  quicken 
the  subconscious  process  of  remembering. 

26 


SOCIAL  HERITAGE  IN  WORK  AND  THOUGHT 

lows  the  intermittent  movements  to  which  they  are  im- 
pelled by  the  presence  of  danger.  Hunting  animals,  on 
the  other  hand,  or  animals,  like  man  and  the  anthropoid 
apes,  of  mixed  diet,  not  only  escape  danger  by  the  inter- 
mittent activities  of  flight,  or  self-defense,  or  puzzled 
thought,  but  obtain  their  food  by  intermittent  actions,  to 
which  they  feel  themselves  impelled  by  fits  and  starts. 

Civilized  man,  therefore,  when  he  digs  potatoes,  or  adds 
up  figures,  as  his  regular  daily  occupation,  is  using  con- 
tinuously under  the  direction  of  self-conscious  will, 
powers  which  were  evolved  for  intermittent  use  under  the 
direction  of  impulse;  and  he  suffers,  in  consequence,  daily 
fatigue,  and  at  longer  intervals  severe  nervous  reactions. 
Habit,  particularly  if  begun  in  early  childhood,  may 
diminish  these  effects,  and  even  submerge  them  below  full 
consciousness,  but  does  not  abolish  them.3  Sustained 
muscular  or  mental  effort  is,  that  is  to  say,  "unnatural"  to 
us,  though  it  is  necessary  for  the  creation  of  the  wealth 
and  power  without  which  civilized  man  cannot  exist.  It 
follows  that  progress  in  the  arts  of  working  and  thinking 
requires  the  invention  of  means,  not  only  of  increasing  the 
immediate  efficiency  of  our  work  and  thought,  but  also, 
of  economizing  them  and  compensating  for  the  strain 
which  they  involve.  Every  increase  of  the  self-conscious 
exertion  involved  in  civilized  work  has  compelled  man- 
kind to  provide  for  periods  when  self-conscious  effort  is 
suspended,  and  the  socially  inherited  element  in  our  be- 
havior is  at  a  minimum.  When  a  modern  factory  hand  or 
clerk  goes  for  a  walk  with  his  dog,  the  behavior  of  the 
man  is  very  like  that  of  the  dog,  and  in  neither  case  is  it 

8  On  the  relation  between  habit  and  our  physiological  nature  see  my 
Great  Society,  Chap.  V. 

27 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

greatly  influenced  by  social  inheritance.  Both  start  with  a 
quickened  step  due  to  an  instinctive  sense  of  joyous  exer- 
cise. Both  show  instinctive  changes  of  expression  and 
attitude  on  meeting  an  unattractive  male,  or  an  attractive 
female,  of  their  own  species.  Both  may  chase  a  rat  with 
similar  instinctive  cries  and  movements.  For  the  first  mile, 
perhaps,  both  will  go  in  a  direction  fixed  by  individual 
habit;  then  both  will  stop,  while  the  decision  to  take  either 
the  field  path  or  the  wood  path  is  made.  That  decision 
may  involve  in  both  a  moment  of  reflection;  then  both  will 
go  forward  with  a  purpose,  i.e.,  with  a  conscious  volition, 
guided  in  the  man,  and  apparently  also  in  the  dog,  by  a 
more  or  less  clear  mental  image  of  the  chosen  route. 
Thought  and  purpose  do  not  here  depend  on  social  inherit- 
ance. The  thought,  both  of  man  and  dog,  deals  with 
individually  acquired  memories  of  past  walks;  and 
thought  and  memory  spontaneously  produce  that  image 
of  the  coming  walk  which  changes  impulse  into  purpose. 
When,  however,  the  pair  come  home,  and  the  man,  re- 
freshed by  an  hour  of  natural  living,  returns  to  the  un- 
natural effort  of  work  or  business,  he  enters  a  region  of 
socially  inherited  behavior  into  which  the  dog  cannot  fol- 
low him.  But,  though  rest  and  recreation,  as  well  as  sleep, 
have  always,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  been  necessary  for  the 
human  being  engaged  in  regular  work,  it  is  only  by  slow 
and  irregular  steps  that  the  human  race  has  included  that 
need  in  its  general  conception  of  the  normal  human  life. 
This  may  have  been  partly  due  to  the  fact  that  regular 
and  monotonous  work  was  first  imposed  by  strong  men — 
who  themselves  fought  and  hunted  and  flogged  by  fits  and 
starts — upon  women  and  slaves  who  could  be  compelled 
to  go  on  pounding  grain  or  scraping  hides  long  beyond 

28 


SOCIAL  HERITAGE  IN  WORK  AND  THOUGHT 

the  point  to  which  their  own  immediate  inclinations,  or 
their  own  desires  for  future  food  or  clothing,  or  a  well- 
informed  calculation  of  their  own  future  efficiency,  would 
have  carried  them.  As  civilization  advanced,  the  regular 
labor  of  serfs  and  women,  and  of  such  slaves  as  were  not 
deliberately  worked  to  death,  was  made  physiologically 
possible  by  interruptions  due  to  weather,  and  by  sabbaths, 
holy  days,  saturnalia,  and  other  customs.  But  these  cus- 
toms, though  they  survived  because  of  their  physiological 
value,  were  thought  of  rather  as  religious  taboos  than  as 
industrial  expedients.  In  the  Middle  Ages  the  conscious 
motive  of  the  guildsmen  in  restricting  working  hours  was 
at  least  as  much  a  desire  to  prevent  unfair  competition  as 
a  desire  to  maintain  the  nervous  and  physical  health  of 
the  craftsman.  The  British  factory  owners  of  1815  to 
1835,  when  they  explained  their  principles  to  the  world, 
could  still  argue  without  insincerity  that  a  regular  twelve- 
hour  day  was  desirable  in  the  interests  of  the  children 
whom  they  employed.4  But  in  the  second  half  of  the 
nineteenth  century  the  rapid  increase  of  machine  indus- 
try made  everyone  aware  of  the  problem.  Every  Euro- 
pean and  North  American  nation  has  restricted  factory 
hours  by  law,  and  at  this  moment  the  customary  working- 
day  is  by  general  consent  being  cut  down  everywhere 
except  in  Eastern  Asia  to  forty-eight  hours  or  less  per 
week.  At  the  same  time,  our  growing  knowledge  of  hu- 

4  Dr.  Ure,  who  expressed  the  current  ideas  of  the  factory  owners, 
declared  in  1835  (Philosophy  of  Manufactures,  p.  406)  that  the  children 
discharged  in  consequence  of  the  Factory  Act  of  1833  "from  their  light 
and  profitable  labor  .  .  .  are  thrown  out  of  the  warm  spinning  rooms 
upon  the  cold  world,  to  exist  by  beggary  or  plunder,  in  idleness  and 
vice."  John  Wesley  made  it  one  of  the  rules  for  the  Methodist  schools 
that  the  children  were  "neither  to  play  nor  to  cry."  (Diet.  Nat.  Biog.) 

29 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

man  physiology  is  compelling  us  to  provide  for  rest  pe- 
riods at  short  intervals  within  the  working-day,  and  is 
emphasizing  the  need  of  an  intensive  study  both  of  cus- 
tomary working  movements  and  of  the  whole  environ- 
ment of  machine  production. 

Men,  again,  have  always  known  that  the  strain  in- 
volved in  certain  forms  of  work  which  we  call  "art" 
might  be  less  than  that  involved  in  the  other  forms  which 
we  call  "labor."  The  primitive  artist  who  painted  canoes, 
or  carved  tusks,  or  played  the  flute  for  ritual  dances,  or  im- 
provised ballads,  found  in  his  best  moments  his  conscious 
efforts  caught  up  by  a  harmonious  and  delightful  "drive" 
of  his  whole  being,  which  was  unknown  to  his  fellows 
who  were  hoeing  a  millet-patch  or  clearing  bushes  from 
a  path.  And  many  of  the  ablest  and  most  imaginative 
working-class  leaders  are  now  hoping  that  the  strain  of 
regular  work  may  be  diminished  by  bringing  back,  with- 
out excessive  loss  of  efficiency,  the  feeling  of  art  into 
forms  of  modern  industry  in  which  it  is  at  present  un- 
known.5 

The  modern  artisan  is  also  beginning  to  be  conscious  of 
other  details  in  his  own  nervous  system.  He  is  beginning 
to  use  the  word  "nerves."  When  he  is  tired  and  inatten- 
tive towards  the  end  of  the  day,  his  "self,"  instead  of 
being  identified  with  his  fatigue,  may  watch  it  and  guard 
against  its  effect  on  his  work  or  his  safety.  When  he  re- 

6  At  the  same  time  the  creative  artist  has  found  that  the  "drive"  of 
art  enables  him  to  make  efforts  severer,  and  sometimes  more  exhausting, 
than  those  of  any  other  form  of  work.  Dante  (Paradiso  XXV)  speaks 
of  "The  poem  which  has  made  me  thin  for  many  years."  On  the  whole 
relation  between  conscious  effort  and  subconscious  "drive"  see  William 
James,  The  Energies  of  Man,  in  Memories  and  Studies  (1911),  Chap.  9, 
and  Woodworth,  Dynamic  Psychology  (1918),  esp.  Chap.  VII. 

30 


SOCIAL  HERITAGE  IN  WORK  AND  THOUGHT 

turns  home  in  the  evening,  he  often  recognizes  that  the 
irritability  of  fatigue  is  still  with  him.  He  will,  therefore, 
if  his  wife  allows  him,  postpone  till  Sunday  any  discussion 
of  their  weekly  expenditure;  and  he  will  deliberately 
sleep,  or  read,  or  play  with  his  children,  or  go  to  the  mov- 
ing pictures,  in  order  to  get  his  nervous  system  back  as 
soon  as  possible  to  its  natural  tone.6 

The  war  revealed  certain  striking  influences  on  military 
efficiency  resulting  from  this  growing  consciousness  of 
the  psychology  of  work  and  recreation.  It  used  to  be 
assumed  that  civilized  industry,  while  it  increased  a  na- 
tion's wealth,  decreased  its  fighting  power.  The  hill  tribes 
of  Persia,  and  the  forest  tribes  of  Germany,  had  con- 
quered the  artisans  and  traders  of  Babylon  and  Egypt 
and  Rome.  Nearly  the  whole  of  the  British  army,  and 
at  least  half  of  the  German  and  American  armies,  con- 
sisted of  industrial  working-men;  who  went  to  the  front 
after  a  military  training  far  too  short  to  create  that  de- 
gree of  discipline  which  a  general  of  the  Thirty  Years' 
War  would  have  thought  absolutely  necessary  for  the 
production  of  reliable  troops.  But  they  stood  firm 
through  month  after  month,  and  year  after  year,  of  fight- 
ing unapproached  in  its  intensity  during  the  whole  history 
of  mankind.  Some  British  officers  ascribed  part  of  this 
new  self-control  to  the  new  fact  of  civilized  psychological 
and  physiological  self-consciousness.  A  private  soldier 

6  Most  of  the  recent  legislation  on  "social  control"  may  be  approached 
from  this  angle.  When  we  discuss  the  prohibition  or  regulation  of  the 
sale  of  alcohol  or  of  betting,  or  the  use  of  Sunday,  or  adult  cultural 
education,  or  prostitution,  or  the  planning  of  garden  cities,  we  are  at- 
tempting, among  other  objects,  to  invent  expedients  for  making  possi- 
ble the  effortless  and  yet  harmless  use  of  the  hours  between  work  and 
sleep. 

31 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

would  discuss  before  a  battle,  and  observe  during  a  battle, 
the  symptoms  of  his  own  fear,  with  no  tendency  to  iden- 
tify his  fear  with  himself;  he  would  speak  of  his  thudding 
pulse,  his  shaking  hand,  his  "cold  feet";  while  firing,  he 
would  remember  that  the  frightened  man,  who  was  him- 
self and  yet  not  himself,  would  tend  to  aim  high.  His 
permanent  self  was  on  the  watch  to  make  a  sudden  severe 
effort  of  inhibition  if  he  were  suddenly  seized  with  an 
impulse  to  run  away.  Therefore,  in  all  the  dull  bewilder- 
ment of  an  intensive  bombardment  or  an  advance  through 
shell-fire,  panic  fear  very  seldom  effectively  gripped  him. 
And  the  psychological  self -consciousness  which  had  trans- 
formed the  modern  workman-soldier,  also,  as  the  war 
went  on,  tended  to  transform  the  methods  of  training 
which  some  officers  employed.  Dr.  C.  S.  Myers,  who 
occupied  an  important  medical  position  during  the  war, 
wrote  to  me  in  1919,  "there  have  been  instances  in  this 
war,  where  psychologically  acute  officers  have  trained 
their  men  by  telling  them  what  to  expect  [i.e.,  what  feel- 
ings to  expect]  in  the  trenches,  with  the  result  that  their 
emotions  have  been  under  control."7  In  every  army, 
rest-camps  were  established  (though  they  were  not,  I 
am  told,  always  directed  by  officers  who  understood  their 
purpose  or  their  technique),  and  the  organization  of 
games  became  as  important  a  part  of  the  art  of  war  as 
the  organization  of  drill. 

The  history  of  sustained  mental  effort  is  roughly  par- 
allel to  that  of  sustained  muscular  effort.  Here  also  we 
have  invented  and  handed  down  new  and  unnatural  forms 
of  behavior,  which  we  are  now  engaged  in  consciously 

7  See  Graham  Wallas  in  the  British  Journal  of  Psychology  (Novem- 
ber, 1919). 

32 


SOCIAL  HERITAGE  IN  WORK  AND  THOUGHT 

adjusting  to  the  facts  of  our  nature.  Perhaps  the  main 
difference  between  the  two  is  that  in  the  case  of  muscular 
work  we  are,  for  the  moment,  most  interested  in  the  in- 
vention of  expedients  for  diminishing  strain  and  fatigue, 
and  that  in  the  case  of  mental  effort  we  are  mainly  con- 
cerned with  expedients  for  increasing  efficiency. 

Mental  activity,  like  muscular  activity,  may,  as  I  have 
already  said,  be  naturally  stimulated  in  man,  and  may 
even,  in  moments  of  danger  and  bewilderment,  be  nat- 
urally heightened  to  the  point  of  intense  mental  exertion. 
At  a  very  early  stage  indeed,  in  civilization,  men  found 
that  thought  could  not  be  relied  on  for  the  guidance  of 
prolonged  purposeful  action,  unless  they  learnt  to  start 
and  maintain  the  thought-process  by  a  self-conscious  ef- 
fort of  will;  and  after  the  invention  of  language,  precepts 
were  handed  down  from  generation  to  generation,  like 
"look  before  you  leap,"  or  "bide  your  time,"  or  "sleep  on 
it,"  the  teaching  of  which  was  that  men  before  starting 
an  irrevocable  course  of  action  should  deliberately  inter- 
pose a  period  of  delay,  during  which  thought,  conscious 
or  subconscious,  could  intervene.8  Such  traditional  pre- 
cepts, however,  merely  inculcate  delay,  and  take  the  proc- 
esses used  by  the  thinker  for  granted.  When,  for  in- 

8  See  my  Great  Society,  Chap.  X.  The  development  of  deliberate 
thinking  has  probably  been  delayed  by  our  slowness  in  inventing  words 
to  indicate  the  various  relations  of  thought  to  will.  All  languages  have 
pairs  of  words  like  "see"  and  "look,"  or  "hear"  and  "listen,"  by  which  we 
can  distinguish  between  the  effortless  and  effortful  use  of  certain  of  our 
senses;  though  it  is  not  easy  to  find  words  to  distinguish  between  the 
"listening"  or  "looking"  which  is  the  immediate  result  of  an  external 
stimulus,  and  that  which  results  from  self-conscious  will.  But  in  the  case 
of  "thought"  (as  in  the  case  of  "smell")  we  only  have  the  one  word  for 
the  three  types,  effortless,  automatically  effortful,  and  self-consciously 
effortful  thinking. 

33 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

stance,  a  young  English  village  laborer,  in  obedience  to 
his  mother's  advice,  or  the  teaching  of  an  old  proverb, 
"bides  his  time"  till  he  has  decided  which  of  two  girls  he 
will  marry,  he  is  unconscious  of  his  own  intellectual 
methods.  Thought,  at  this  stage,  is  not  distinguished 
from  other  psychological  processes.  It  may  go  on  in  un- 
conscious combination  with  fear,  or  hope,  or  jealousy,  or 
the  emotions  of  leadership,  or  obedience,  or  craftsman- 
ship, or  beauty.  A  man  finds  that  when  his  period  of 
waiting  is  over,  he  has,  under  the  joint  influences  of  emo- 
tions and  memories  and  thoughts,  formed,  he  knows  not 
how,  a  new  purpose.  If  we  ask  whether  the  thought- 
process  at  this  stage  is  "natural"  or  "artificial,"  we  are 
met  with  the  parasitic  relation,  to  which  I  have  already 
referred,  between  certain  factors  in  man's  biological  na- 
ture and  his  social  heritage  of  language.  Just  as  man  has 
evolved  a  natural  instinct  to  use  language  in  speech,  pro- 
vided always  that  there  is  a  language  there  for  him  to 
learn,  so  he  has  apparently  evolved  a  natural  tendency 
to  use  language,  when  he  has  learnt  it,  in  thought.9 

But  civilized  man  has  not  only  learnt  how  to  enter  by  a 
conscious  and  artificial  effort  on  the  process  of  natural  or 
quasi-natural  thought.  He  has  also  invented  and  handed 
down  innumerable  expedients  by  which  the  thought-proc- 
ess itself  can  be  made  more  effective.  The  most  obvious 
of  these  are  mathematics  and  the  other  types  of  formal 
logic.  We  can  guess,  with  the  help  of  the  traces  of  early 
Babylonian  and  Greek  speculation,  at  some  of  the  early 
steps  in  such  inventions;  and  that  they  must  have  been 

9  See  the  evidence  as  to  "word-blindness"  and  other  structural  and 
functional  disorders  of  those  regions  in  the  brain  in  which  language  and 
thought  are  correlated. 

34 


SOCIAL  HERITAGE  IN  WORK  AND  THOUGHT 

encouraged  by  the  fact  that  individual  variation  between 
man  and  man  is,  in  respect  of  our  recently  evolved  intel- 
lectual powers,  very  much  greater  than  it  is  in  such  com- 
paratively early  facts  as  height,  or  strength,  or  manual 
skill,  and  therefore  the  born  thinker  is  very  widely  re- 
moved from  the  average  of  his  fellows.  Many  men  had, 
for  instance,  long  before  the  invention  of  any  other  logic 
than  grammatical  speech,  become  interested  in  the 
heavenly  bodies.  During  periods  of  reverie  at  night,  they 
thought  "naturally"  about  them,  i.e.,  watched  them,  were 
anxious  about  them,  admired  them,  feared  them,  and 
wove  them  half-consciously  into  figures  of  giants  and  ani- 
mals. A  few  of  the  ablest  of  them  noticed,  by  the  same 
natural  process,  that  some  of  the  brighter  stars  moved 
slowly  about  the  sky;  they  called  them  planets,  and  hoped 
and  feared  more  from  them  than  from  the  other  stars. 
But  one  or  two  exceptional  Babylonians  or  Greeks  went 
much  further;  they  made  a  new  use  of  the  early  and  all- 
important  invention  of  number;  night  after  night  they 
counted  the  units  of  measurement  in  time  and  space  which 
recorded  the  movements  of  some  one  star  in  relation  to 
its  fellows.  They  invented,  and  handed  down  to  their 
disciples,  new  methods  of  arithmetic  and  geometry  and 
logic,  which  could  be  used  for  land-surveying  and  archi- 
tecture as  well  as  for  astronomy.  Such  thought  methods 
were  often  held  by  those  who  could  not  understand  them 
to  be  so  unnatural  and  impious  that  men  were  killed  for 
using  them.  They  would,  perhaps,  have  been  abandoned 
by  the  whole  race,  but  for  the  fact  that  the  new  processes 
were  found  to  be  more  efficient  than  the  old;  the  architect 
who  used  geometry  built  stronger  temples  than  he  who 
relied  solely  on  his  "eye";  Jupiter  and  Venus  and  Mars 

35 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

did  not  always  justify  the  old  fears  and  hopes  of  victory 
or  defeat  or  the  deaths  of  kings;  but  they  did  present 
themselves  night  after  night  at  the  points  indicated  by 
the  philosophers'  circles  and  triangles;  and  the  moon  was 
eclipsed  at  the  calculated  dates. 

The  continuance  of  our  present  industrial  civilization 
is  now  made  possible  by  the  fact  that  all  men  learn  in 
childhood,  and  use  during  the  working-day,  some  of  those 
logical  methods  which  were  painfully  invented  by  philos- 
ophers and  mathematicians  at  the  beginning  of  civiliza- 
tion. A  modern  tenant  farmer,  as  he  stands  hesitating 
whether  to  begin  his  harvest  or  not,  may  seem  to  be  think- 
ing as  "naturally"  as  his  palaeolithic  ancestors;  but  even 
he  will  probably  make  a  few  calculations  as  to  hours  of 
labor  per  acre,  market  prices,  and  his  chance  of  an  over- 
draft at  the  bank,  in  which  he  will  employ  the  clumsy 
combination  of  Babylonian  duodecimal  arithmetic  and 
Greek  decimal  arithmetic  which  he  learnt  at  school.  A 
working  engineer,  with  his  case  of  gauges,  a  munition-girl 
at  her  lathe,  or  a  chemist's  assistant,  lives  during  the 
working-day,  like  Pythagoras,  in  a  universe  composed  of 
number.  Meanwhile  the  students  of  the  physical  sciences 
are  rapidly  inventing  new  and  more  efficient  forms  of 
thought.  A  modern  "scientist"  substitutes  for  the  simple 
rules  of  geometry  and  arithmetic  and  logic,  elaborate 
mathematical  and  statistical  systems,  which  have  often 
been  specially  invented  for  his  own  branch  of  study,  and 
looks  on  these  rules  as  only  a  stage  in  the  "scientific 
method"  of  hypothesis,  experiment,  and  inference.  He 
makes  some  use  of  that  psychological  self -consciousness 
which  is  part  of  the  social  heritage  of  our  time,  and  tries 
to  invent  expedients  by  which  certain  mental  attitudes 

36 


SOCIAL  HERITAGE  IN  WORK  AND  THOUGHT 

may  control  subconscious  mental  processes.  He  incul- 
cates, for  instance,  on  his  disciples  ideals  of  scientific 
"thoroughness"  and  "patience"  and  intellectual  "integ- 
rity." 

Modern  scientific  method  has  hitherto  won  its  most 
conspicuous  successes  in  the  sciences  (astronomy,  chemis- 
try, and  physics)  which  deal  either  with  lifeless  matter 
or  with  matter  from  which  all  qualities  except  the  meas- 
urability  which  it  shares  with  lifeless  matter  have  been 
abstracted.  Great,  though  less  complete,  success  has  at- 
tended its  application  to  the  simpler  forms  and  qualities 
of  living  matter,  in  botany,  zoology,  and  the  experimental 
examination  of  such  elementary  facts  in  human  psychol- 
ogy as  sensation  and  perception.  "Scientific  method"  has 
been  least  successful  in  dealing  with  the  more  complex 
forms  of  human  behavior.  The  student  of  human  con- 
duct cannot  standardize  his  material,  as  can  the  chemist 
or  metallurgist,  nor  isolate,  like  the  physicist,  one  factor 
in  a  concrete  problem  from  the  rest.  The  material  of  his 
most  important  observations  must  be  found,  not  in  care- 
fully contrived  and  rigorously  controlled  experiments,  but 
in  the  observation  of  occurrences  of  daily  life,  each  one 
of  which  is  the  resultant  of  innumerable  factors  which 
the  thinker  can  estimate  only  with  various  degrees  of 
uncertainty.  And  if  he  has  once  acquired  a  habit  of  using 
(as  did,  for  instance,  the  early  nineteenth  century  econ- 
omists) a  logical  method  unsuited  to  his  material,  his  sub- 
conscious, as  well  as  his  conscious  thinking,  may  be  per- 
manently distorted.  One  can  detect,  however,  during  the 
last  few  decades,  a  slowly  emerging  promise  that  the  stu- 
dents of  the  human  sciences  may  invent  logical  methods 
specially  adapted  to  the  qualities  of  their  subject-matter 

37 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

and  an  agreed  terminology  which  will  make  it  possible  for 
those  methods  to  be  used  by  others  as  well  as  their  origi- 
nal inventors.  The  growing  accumulations,  for  instance, 
of  statistical  returns,  and  our  growing  caution  in  securing 
that  every  unit  in  a  statistical  total  shall  represent  an 
answer  to  the  same  question,  is  making  it  possible  to 
frame  a  special  statistico-mathematical  logic  for  the  hu- 
man sciences  which  ultimately,  like  arithmetic  or  Aris- 
totle's formal  logic,  may  influence  the  language  and 
thought-processes  of  the  ordinary  civilized  man. 

But  while  the  complexity  and  variability  of  the  material 
dealt  with  by  the  human  sciences  constitute  a  special  dif- 
ficulty and  require  a  special  logic,  a  subtler  difficulty  is 
created  by  the  emotional  relation  of  that  material  to  the 
thinker.  The  thinker  about  mankind,  because  he  is  a  hu- 
man being,  is  born  with  a  number  of  strong  instincts, 
jealousy,  leadership,  loyalty,  fear,  sex,  etc.,  whose  special 
stimulus  is  the  presence  or  idea  of  his  fellows.  At  what 
mental  attitude  should  he  aim  with  regard  to  these  in- 
stincts, and  the  emotions  to  which  they  give  rise?  Should 
he,  for  instance,  in  order  to  attain  to  "scientific"  or  "phil- 
osophic" detachment,  attempt,  while  thinking,  to  repress 
in  himself  all  emotions  concerning  those  about  whom  he 
thinks?  One  cannot,  I  believe,  give  a  useful  answer  to 
this  question  without  distinguishing  between  the  logical 
rules  by  which  the  relation  of  premises  to  conclusions  are 
tested  and  the  flow  of  associated  ideas  which  those  rules 
help  to  direct.  No  emotional  condition  of  the  thinker  will 
make  two  and  two  equal  to  five,  or  turn  a  weak  argument 
into  a  strong  one,  or  justify  the  repeated  claim  of  defend- 
ers of  established  political  and  religious  faiths  that  an 
inclination  to  believe  should  be  treated  as  sufficient  evi- 

38 


SOCIAL  HERITAGE  IN  WORK  AND  THOUGHT 

dence  for  any  familiar  dogma.  But,  if  fertility  of  asso- 
ciation without  logical  consistency  is  unsafe,  logical  con- 
sistency without  fertility  of  association  is  barren.  At 
every  stage  of  sustained  thought — the  formation  of  the 
original  hypothesis,  the  invention  of  experiments,  the  de- 
tection of  the  significance  of  unexpected  evidence,  the 
appreciation  of  all  that  is  involved  in  our  conclusions — 
we  are  dependent  on  the  flow  of  ideas,  and  the  flow  of 
ideas,  when  we  are  dealing  with  human  material,  depends 
in  large  part  on  the  richness  of  our  emotional  as  well  as 
of  our  reasoning  processes.  If,  for  instance,  one  com- 
pares Adam  Smith's  Wealth  of  Nations  with  Whately's 
Lectures  on  Political  Economy,  one  sees  how  enormously 
the  fertility  of  Adam  Smith's  thought  has  gained  from  his 
sympathy  and  humor,  and  how  much  he  would  have  lost 
as  a  thinker  if  he  had  attempted  to  repress  in  himself  all 
psychological  processes  which  are  not  to  be  found  in  the 
text-books  of  formal  logic.  And  thought  accompanied 
by  a  free  play  of  the  emotions  involves  less  strain  than 
thought  accompanied  by  a  conscious  or  subconscious 
effort  of  repression.  During  the  last  few  years,  the  prob- 
lem of  the  relation  between  our  thoughts  and  our  feelings 
has  been  further  complicated  by  Freud  and  his  followers, 
who  have  argued  that  complete  inhibition  of  profound 
emotions  and  memories  does  not  and  cannot  take  place, 
and  that  such  emotions  and  memories,  if  driven  by  an 
effort  of  will  beneath  the  level  of  consciousness,  are  more 
likely  to  distort  our  thinking  than  if  they  had  remained 
conscious.  The  effort  of  will,  or  nervous  shock,  which 
originally  drove  an  idea  beneath  consciousness  persists, 
they  argue,  as  a  "censor,"  preventing  the  return  of  the 
idea  in  its  original  form  to  consciousness,  even  if  that  re- 

39 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

turn  would  be  useful  to  us.  The  Freudian  writers  are 
mainly  practising  medical  men,  accustomed  before  the 
war  to  deal  with  patients  of  naturally  subnormal  nervous 
stability,  whose  difficulty  in  thinking  of  certain  subjects 
might  very  often  be  diagnosed  as  due  to  some  sexual  or 
quasi-sexual  event  in  the  past.  Their  main  remedial  tech- 
nique is  to  discover  the  original  experience  by  "psycho- 
analysis," or  some  other  method  of  "tapping"  the  sub- 
conscious memory,  to  bring  it  into  conscious  relation  with 
the  facts  contained  in  conscious  memory,  and  to  make  it 
the  subject  of  consciously  critical  thought  on  the  part  of 
the  patient.  During  the  war  our  nerve-doctors  had  an 
enormous  experience  of  "shell-shock"  and  other  nervous 
disorders,  in  patients  most  of  whom  were  either  above 
or  not  far  below  normal  in  their  original  nervous  health. 
Some  of  the  ablest  of  the  doctors  came  to  the  conclusion 
that  the  proportion  of  cases  in  which  the  "censorship" 
was  due  to  a  distant  sexual  event  had  been  greatly  exag- 
gerated. They  also  abandoned  the  hope  of  finding  any 
one  technique  which  would  fit  all  cases.  They  found  that 
while  in  some  cases  the  patient  benefited  by  bringing  his 
memory  of  a  shocking  war  event  to  the  surface,  and  talk- 
ing freely  about  it,  in  other  cases  it  was  best  to  encourage 
the  patient  to  cease  to  talk  about  the  event,  and  to  forget 
it  as  far  as  possible.10 

This  controversy  about  Freudian  psychiatry  is  an- 
other of  many  indications  that  progress  in  thought  about 
human  behavior  may  depend  in  the  future,  not  only 
on  a  new  relation  of  the  thinker  to  his  emotions,  but  on 
the  invention  and  social  inheritance  of  a  many-sided  tech- 

10  See  e.g.,  W.  H.  R.  Rivers,  Instinct  and  the  Unconscious  (1920),  p. 

12. 

40 


SOCIAL  HERITAGE  IN  WORK  AND  THOUGHT 

nique,  involving  the  conscious  use  by  the  thinker  of  many 
different  expedients  to  secure  fertility  in  the  flow  of  his 
ideas,  logical  thoroughness  in  the  process  of  inference,  and 
economy  of  effort.  At  one  time  a  thinker  will  suspect  that 
he  is  turning  himself  from  a  man  into  a  machine,  and  will 
attempt  to  smile  and  frown  with  Adam  Smith,  rather  than 
imitate  the  cold  donnishness  of  Whately.  At  another  time 
he  will  suspect  that  he  is  allowing  his  free  flow  of  feeling 
to  bear  him  past  the  point  where  his  argument  calls  for 
the  severest  effort  of  logical  consistency.  He  will  then 
understand  what  Mr.  Arnold  Bennett  means,  when  he  de- 
nounces the  "sentimentalists"  and  "truth-shirkers,"  and 
pleads  for  "hard  sustained  cerebral  activity  and  real- 
ism."11 Sometimes  the  thinker  will  believe  that  his 
thought  is  being  obstructed  by  mere  habit,  which  can  be 
overcome  by  the  resolute  initiation  of  a  new  habit;  some- 
times he  will  suspect  some  half-forgotten  experience  which 
he  had  better  either  definitely  remember  or  definitely  for- 
get. Sometimes  the  thinker's  conscious  efforts  will  be 
concentrated  on  the  stimulation  of  subconscious  mental 
processes.  In  May,  1918,  for  instance,  there  appeared 
in  many  English  newspapers  a  character  sketch  (from 
the  French  Journal}  of  General  Foch.  He  was  said  to 
use  two  special  methods  of  "grappling  with  the  over- 
whelming problems  which  he  has  to  solve."  One  was 
"the  excellent  method  of  sleeping  over  them.  He  revolves 
them  in  his  mind  before  going  to  sleep,  and  next  morning 
has  generally  found  a  solution."  "I  always  think,"  he 
was  represented  as  saying,  "that  my  hand-mirror,  when 
I  shave  before  it  in  the  morning,  reflects  to  me  the  an- 
swers to  the  questions  I  had  thought  about  the  night  be- 

11  Daily  News  (February  23,  1916). 

41 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

fore."  General  Foch's  other  method  was  that  "he  takes 
coffee  and  smokes  an  inordinate  number  of  small  dark 
cigars."  (See  Daily  Telegraph,  May  27,  1918.)  Time  in 
war  is  so  all-important,  that,  if  a  general  finds  that  "an 
inordinate  number  of  small  dark  cigars"  is  the  most  im- 
mediately effective  means  of  stimulating  subconscious 
thought,  it  may  be  wise  for  him  to  use  it.  In  peace,  sleep 
and  a  walk  in  the  woods  may  be  a  better  means;  and 
future  historians  of  the  Peace  Conferences  of  1919-1920 
may  believe  that  human  kindliness  would  have  had  a  bet- 
ter chance  of  influencing  and  widening  French  thought 
about  the  future  organization  of  mankind  if  it  had  not 
been  so  exact  a  continuation  of  the  urgent  but  narrow 
process  of  strategical  invention.  Again,  because  each 
part  of  our  higher  nervous  structure  is  easily  tired  by 
continuous  stimulation,  and  easily  disordered  by  being 
left  long  without  stimulation,  the  thinker  will  find  that 
variety  of  method,  owing  to  the  mere  fact  of  its  being 
variety,  is  better  than  uniformity.  And  he  may  also 
learn  from  music  and  the  other  fine  arts  that  rhythmic 
form  not  only  diminishes  fatigue,  but  stimulates  the  still 
obscure  instincts  which  cause  the  emotion  of  beauty  and, 
through  the  emotion  of  beauty,  stimulate  creative  thought. 
We  may  come  to  learn  as  much  about  the  causes  which 
put  Plato  and  Dante  and  Goethe  among  the  great  thinkers 
of  the  world,  from  a  study  of  Beethoven's  sonatas,  as  from 
the  rules  of  logic  and  mathematics. 

Perhaps,  in  the  end,  the  human  sciences  may  pay  back 
in  this  way  something  of  their  debt  to  the  physical  sci- 
ences. Prof.  A.  E.  Taylor  may  have  indicated  a  path  for 
future  progress  in  the  physical  sciences  when  he  wrote, 
"mental  facts,  such  as  hopes  and  fears,  fixations  and  re- 

42 


SOCIAL  HERITAGE  IN  WORK  AND  THOUGHT 

laxations  of  attention,  accompany  every  physical  experi- 
ment we  can  make,  and  form  with  it  a  single  indivisible 
experience,  but  one  may  perfectly  well  work  through  a 
text-book  of  physics,  or  chemistry,  or  electricity  without 
coming  across  the  admission  that  there  is  such  a  thing 
as  a  feeling  or  an  emotion  in  the  world."12  Sir  Richard 
Owen,  for  instance,  might  have  played  a  different  and 
more  helpful  part  in  the  scientific  discussion  of  Darwin's 
Origin  of  Species,  if  he  had  been  a  student  of  the  effect  of 
jealousy  on  thought.  But  it  may  be  that  the  study  of  the 
technique  of  thought  will  be  most  helpful  when  it  insists 
on  the  relation  both  of  thought  and  of  feeling  to  the  whole 
life  of  the  thinker.  The  thinker's  daily  activities  include 
not  only  mental  attitudes  and  methods,  and  mental  and 
emotional  stimuli,  but  also  the  acts  of  sitting  down  at  his 
desk,  of  answering  his  letters,  of  arranging  his  notes,  of 
meals  and  exercise,  of  marriage  or  celibacy;  and  the  sys- 
tematic thought  of  the  statesman,  the  engineer,  and  the 
financier  depends  for  its  efficiency  upon  its  relation  to 
the  daily  routine  of  administration,  or  construction,  or 
business.  For  the  young  official,  indeed,  or  business  man 
who  desires  in  his  own  case  to  use  psychological  self-con- 
sciousness as  a  means  of  attaining  intellectual  efficiency 
I  know  of  no  more  useful  book  than  a  little  manual  called 
The  Statesman,  written  in  1836  by  Sir  Henry  Taylor  the 
poet,  who  was  also  one  of  the  ablest  of  the  nineteenth- 
century  officials  in  the  British  Colonial  Office.  Sir  Henry 
Taylor  says  that  "as  fast  as  papers  are  received,  the  party 
who  is  to  act  upon  them  should  examine  them  so  far  as  to 
ascertain  whether  any  of  them  relate  to  business  which 
requires  immediate  attention,  and  should  then  separate 

12  The  Problem  of  Conduct  (1901),  p.  23. 

43 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

and  arrange  them.  But  once  so  arranged  ...  he  should 
not  again  suffer  himself  to  look  at  a  paper  or  handle  it, 
except  in  the  purpose  and  with  the  determination  to  go 
through  with  it  and  dispatch  the  affair.  For  the  practice 
of  looking  at  papers  and  handling  them  without  disposing 
of  them,  not  only  wastes  the  time  so  employed,  but  breeds 
an  undue  impression  of  difficulty  and  trouble  as  connected 
with  them;  and  the  repetition  of  acts  of  postponement  on 
any  subject  tends  more  and  more  to  the  subjugation  of 
the  active  power  in  relation  to  it.  Moreover  it  will  be 
desirable  to  act  upon  a  paper  or  bundle  while  it  looks 
fresh;  for  it  will  become  uninteresting  if  the  eye  have  got 
accustomed  to  it  lying  aside,  and  absolutely  repulsive  if 
it  have  assumed  a  dusty,  obsolete,  and  often-postponed 
appearance"  (pp.  82-83).  He  should  aim  at  "the  states- 
man's powers  of  self-government — of  intention  and  re- 
mission in  business,  of  putting  the  mind  on  and  taking  it 
off"  (p.  80).  The  statesman,  he  says,  "must  appeal 
.  .  .  from  the  impulses  of  a  perturbed  and  hurried  life  to 
the  principle  of  order"  (p.  76).  "One  who  should  feel 
himself  to  be  over-excitable  in  the  transaction  of  business, 
would  do  well  to  retard  himself  mechanically  'and  by  the 
body's  action  teach  the  mind';  for  the  body  is  a  handle  to 
the  mind  in  these  as  in  other  particulars.  Thus  he  should 
never  suffer  himself  to  write  in  a  hurried  hand"  (p.  78). 
The  speculative  thinker  can  learn  from  Sir  Henry  Taylor 
the  value  of  tidiness  in  note-keeping,13  and  the  need  of 
overcoming  by  a  sharp  effort  of  will  the  "complex"  which 

13  "The  arrangement,  tying  up,  and  docketing  of  such  papers  as  are 
before  him,  is  a  business  which  he  should  undertake  himself,  and  not 
leave  to  his  secretary;  for  a  man  cannot  methodize  the  subject-matter 
of  his  business  without  at  the  same  time  methodizing  his  mind"  (p.  78). 

44 


SOCIAL  HERITAGE  IN  WORK  AND  THOUGHT 

makes  him  avoid  thinking  about  a  certain  branch  of  his 
subject  because  he  has  not  answered  a  letter.  But  he  will 
learn  more  from  Sir  Henry  Taylor's  insistence  that  card- 
catalogues  and  notebooks  cannot  take  the  place  of  those 
silent  moments  in  which  thought  and  feeling,  conscious- 
ness, and  subconsciousness,  are  merged  in  expectant  con- 
templation. "It  were  to  be  wished,"  he  says,  that  the 
statesman  "should  set  apart  from  business  not  only  a 
sabbatical  day  in  each  week,  but  if  it  be  possible  a  sab- 
batical hour  in  each  day"  (p.  79). 

Our  growing  consciousness,  again,  of  the  relation  be- 
tween our  socially  inherited  forms  of  intellectual  behavior 
and  our  biological  heritage  of  intellectual  and  emotional 
powers,  should  influence,  not  only  our  methods  of  adult 
mental  self-direction,  but  also  the  methods  of  education 
of  those  who  are  trained  in  youth  for  a  life  of  mental 
effort.  School  children  should  learn  to  recognize  and  un- 
dertake the  conscious  effort  by  which  thought  is  made 
efficient,  and  to  distinguish  it,  both  from  the  automatic 
activity  of  recreative  thought,  and  from  the  effortless  "in- 
terest" stimulated  in  the  members  of  a  class  by  a  skilled 
and  "magnetic"  teacher.  Children  can  learn  that  distinc- 
tion at  a  very  early  age.  A  little  English  boy,  who  after- 
wards became  one  of  the  most  brilliant  of  the  young 
soldiers  who  were  killed  in  the  war,  was  sent  at  the  age 
of  six  or  seven  to  a  well-known  Froebelian  school  in 
London,  which  aimed  at  obliterating  the  distinction  be- 
tween "play"  and  "lessons."  When  he  returned  at  the 
end  of  his  first  week,  he  said  to  his  father,  "At  that  school, 
when  they  work  they  don't  really  work,  and  when  they 
play  they  don't  really  play."  In  the  next  place,  the  pupil 
should  learn  to  distinguish  between  various  kinds  of  men- 

45 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

tal  effort.  In  particular,  he  should  soon  be  made  aware  of 
the  difference  between  the  mere  concentration  involved  in 
learning  by  rote,  and  the  straining  expectancy,  the  seizing 
and  holding  to  a  new  idea  when  it  is  only  an  uncomforta- 
ble premonitory  feeling,  which  is  required  even  in  so  sim- 
ple a  process  of  intellectual  creation  as  the  writing  of  a 
school  essay.  The  teacher,  again,  should  be  conscious 
that  while  he  is  training  his  pupils  in  intellectual  tech- 
nique, he  is  also  handing  down  to  them  the  social  heritage 
of  a  body  of  knowledge.  That  knowledge  must  be  so 
chosen  as  to  give  his  pupils  the  most  effective  intellectual 
equipment  for  adult  life,  and  at  the  same  time  to  stimulate 
such  emotions  as  may  increase  the  fertility  of  thought  and 
diminish  the  strain  of  intellectual  effort. 

In  all  these  respects  the  English  educational  system  is 
now  passing  through  a  critical  period.  The  educational 
renaissance  started,  in  the  eighteen  twenties  and  thirties, 
at  some  of  the  older  endowed  "public  schools,"  and  at  Ox- 
ford and  Cambridge,  by  the  writings  and  example  of 
Coleridge,  Thomas  Arnold,  and  other  disciples  of  the 
Prussian  thinkers,  had  many  admirable  results.  The  stu- 
dent who  goes  from  the  sixth  form  of  Winchester  or  Har- 
row to  take  a  first  class  in  Oxford  "Greats"  or  the  Cam- 
bridge Mathematical  Tripos,  acquires  a  high  degree  of 
ability  in  what  Sir  Henry  Taylor  called  "putting  the  mind 
on  and  taking  it  off."  But  it  was  never  more  than  a  very 
small  fraction  even  of  exceptionally  able  young  English- 
men who  were  able  to  benefit  by  that  renaissance;  and 
the  need  for  other  kinds  of  knowledge  than  Latin  and 
Greek  language  and  literature  and  pure  mathematics  is 
now  so  urgent  that  both  "Greats"  and  the  Mathematical 
Tripos  are  rapidly  shrinking  for  want  of  candidates.  In 

46 


SOCIAL  HERITAGE  IN  WORK  AND  THOUGHT 

the  new  municipal  secondary  schools,  and  the  new  uni- 
versities, little  Latin  and  hardly  any  Greek  is  taught. 
The  subjects  which  are  taking  the  place  of  the  old  "pub- 
lic-school" curriculum  are  natural  science  and  history, 
economics,  modern  literature,  and  other  forms  of  "modern 
humanities."14  In  the  case  of  natural  science,  I  have  had 
no  opportunity  of  estimating  the  kind  of  intellectual 
effort  and  emotional  stimulus  which  accompanies  school 
and  college  laboratory  work.  In  the  case  of  "modern 
culture"  I  sometimes  fear  that  our  present  pedagogic 
methods  may  not  produce  the  same  awareness  and  ex- 
perience of  the  more  difficult  forms  of  mental  effort,  as 
that  produced  at  Rugby,  or  Winchester,  or  Balliol,  or 
Trinity,  during  the  second  half  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
The  writing  of  Latin  prose,  or  the  working  of  examples  in 
analytical  conies,  often  prepared  the  young  public  school 
boy  of  my  own  generation,  either  for  a  period  of  dis- 
gust and  disillusionment,  when  he  discovered  how  re- 
moved his  knowledge  was  from  the  needs  of  his  time,  or 
for  a  life  of  contented  dilettantism.  But  they  did  train 
him  to  undertake,  of  himself,  a  prolonged  and  severe  intel- 
lectual effort  which  was  not  mere  memorizing.  The  older 
teaching,  on  the  other  hand,  was  enormously  expensive, 
and  was  confined  to  a  few  richly  endowed  schools  and 
universities;  a  few  able  masters  or  college  tutors,  who  had 
themselves  gone  through  the  experience  of  sustained  in- 
tellectual effort,  gave  invaluable  hints  to  individual  boys 
or  undergraduates  in  the  personal  interviews  during  which 
they  corrected  compositions  or  discussed  essays.  When 
we  have  raised  the  number  of  our  secondary  and  univer- 
sity students  to  five  or  ten  times  the  nineteenth-century 

14  See  Stanley  Leathes,  What  Is  Education?  (1913). 

47 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

number,  we  shall  find  it  much  more  difficult  to  obtain 
teachers  of  high  natural  ability,  and  almost  impossible  to 
secure  that  any  teacher  should  give  much  of  his  time  to 
individual  tuition.  One  remedy  for  this  danger  seems  to 
me  that  the  teacher  should  substitute  organized  class  in- 
struction in  the  psychological  technique  of  intellectual 
work  for  unorganized  individual  hints.  We  should  not 
leave  instruction  in  mental  attitudes  and  methods  either  to 
accident  or  to  the  "Pelman  Institute"  and  other  commer- 
cial firms.  If  students  were  taught  as  a  body  to  recognize 
the  form  taken  in  consciousness  by  intellectual  effort,  the 
direction  of  that  effort  by  such  expedients  as  class-lessons, 
questioning,  examinations,  or  the  "looking  over"  of  writ- 
ten compositions,  would  be  made  infinitely  more  effec- 
tive.15 The  expedient  of  class-teaching  in  the  psychology 
of  mental  work,  both  as  a  separate  "subject,"  and  as  an 
integral  part  of  the  teaching  of  all  subjects,  will  be  pecul- 
iarly necessary  if  the  political  connection  between  Britain 
and  India  is-  to  continue,  and  if  British  teachers  are  to 
play  any  part  in  satisfying  the  Indian  hunger  for  modern 
knowledge.  The  traditions  of  Indian  education  still  bear 
traces  of  the  time  when  its  main  purpose  was  to  preserve 
without  change  (in  the  absence  of  books)  the  socially 
inherited  treasures  of  the  intellect  from  generation  to 

15  I  may  perhaps  be  permitted  to  refer  to  an  experiment  which  I  made 
nearly  forty  years  ago,  when  I  was  teaching  Greek  and  Latin  to  boys 
of  eleven  and  twelve  who  were  being  prepared  for  the  scholarships  of 
the  big  English  endowed  schools.  I  used  to  make  them  repeat  a  sort 
of  catechism,  in  the  course  of  which  they  said,  "My  duty  as  a  member 
of  this  class  is  to  acquire  correct  intellectual  habits."  Some  of  those 
boys  are  now  grown  men,  and  I  have  never  had  any  reason  to  think  that 
the  effect  on  them  of  such  early  intellectual  self-consciousness  has  been 
other  than  good. 

48 

^ 


SOCIAL  HERITAGE  IN  WORK  AND  THOUGHT 

generation.  The  emphasis  on  memorizing,  which  was 
originally  necessary  but  is  now  superfluous,  is  increased 
by  the  mechanical  system  of  examinations  which  domi- 
nates Indian  higher  education,  and  by  the  fact  that  edu- 
cation carried  on  in  a  foreign  language  must  necessarily 
be  weak  in  emotional  stimulus.16 

When  visiting  the  United  States  as  teacher  and  ob- 
server, I  have  sometimes  thought  that  the  rapidly  increas- 
ing American  interest  in  applied  psychology  may,  in  the 
near  future,  exercise  a  marked  influence  on  this  side  of 
American  education.  An  Englishman  in  the  United  States 
envies  the  universal  recognition  of  education  as  desirable, 
and  the  open-handed  generosity  both  of  public  grants  and 
of  private  gifts  to  every  kind  of  educational  institution. 
The  United  States,  with  rather  more  than  twice  the  popu- 
lation of  the  United  Kingdom,  has  more  than  four  times 
as  many  students  in  secondary  schools,  and  more  than 
eight  times  as  many  in  universities.17  Some  of  the  great 
professional  post-graduate  university  schools  (such  as  the 
Harvard  Law  School,  and  the  Johns  Hopkins  Medical 
School)  are,  in  equipment,  number  of  students,  and  in- 
tellectual keenness,  incomparably  above  any  correspond- 
ing institution  in  the  United  Kingdom.  The  United  States 
combines  with  these  advantages  the  fact  that  her  white 
population  starts  with  a  higher  average  biological  inherit- 
ance of  brain  and  body  than  has  any  other  population  ex- 

16  See  Report  of  the  Calcutta  University  Commission  (1819),  Vol.  II, 
Chaps.  XVII  and  XVIII. 

17  See  P.  J.  Hartog  in  the  Journal  of  the  Royal  Society   of  Arts 
(1919).    I  have  used  the  statistics  of  the  United  Kingdom  rather  than 
of  England  because  they  are  the  best  available.     The  arguments  in  the 
text  apply,  however,  to  the  educational  system  of  England.    The  systems 
of  Scotland  and  Ireland  present  rather  different  problems. 

49 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

cept  perhaps  the  few  thousand  free  inhabitants  of  Athens 
in  the  fifth  century  B.  C.,  or  of  Iceland  in  the  tenth  cen- 
tury A.  D.  And  yet  in  her  actual  production  of  construc- 
tive, critical,  and  imaginative  literature,  many  Americans 
believe,  with  regret,  that  America  does  not  now  "pull  her 
weight  in  the  boat"  of  world-civilization.  To  a  foreigner  it 
appears  as  if  one  cause  of  this  lies  in  an  insufficient  recog- 
nition of  the  need  of  civilized  man  for  conscious  and  sys- 
tematized intellectual  effort.  In  the  education  of  young 
children,  successive  movements  for  the  reform  of  Ameri- 
can common  schools  have  been  greatly  influenced  by  the 
conception  of  the  "natural"  growth  of  the  human  mind, 
as  expounded  by  Froebel  and  other  early  nineteenth-cen- 
tury educationists,18  by  the  coincidence  of  that  concep- 
tion with  the  eighteenth-century  political  ideas  of  "na- 
ture" received  from  Rousseau  by  the  Fathers  of  the 
American  Revolution,  and  by  the  fact  that  the  physical 
environment  of  the  pioneer  life  of  fifty  years  ago  was 
sufficiently  like  that  of  primitive  man  to  make  it  much 
safer  than  it  is  in  modern  New  York  or  Chicago  for  him  to 
trust  to  the  more  natural  forms  of  thought.  But  Froebel 
seems  to  me  to  have  helped  to  produce  a  dangerous  neg- 
lect by  current  American  theory  of  the  socially  inherited 
elements  in  civilization.  Two  very  able  young  American 
physiologists,  who  had  themselves  received  a  post-grad- 
uate training  in  natural  science  far  more  thorough  than 
anything  they  could  have  found  in  England,  told  me  in 
1919  that  they  had  failed  in  discussion  to  agree  on  a  defi- 

18  Froebel  goes  so  far  as  to  argue  in  a  section  of  his  Education  of 
Man  that  the  little  German  develops  the  simpler  forms  of  German  speech 
by  a  process  as  free  from  any  dependence  on  social  inheritance  as  the 
unfolding  of  a  flower. 

50 


SOCIAL  HERITAGE  IN  WORK  AND  THOUGHT 

nition  of  education,  and  asked  my  help.  I  denned  edu- 
cation in  some  such  words  as  "a  process  by  which  human 
beings  so  acquire  the  knowledge  and  habits  which  consti- 
tute civilization  as  to  be  fitted  to  live  well  both  individu- 
ally and  in  cooperation."  One  of  them  replied,  "That  was 
what  we  wanted.  We  thought  of  education  as  a  develop- 
ment of  the  personality  and  so  on,  but  we  did  not  manage 
to  think  of  it  as  a  process  of  learning  things."  The  same 
intellectual  tradition,  combined  with  the  practical  diffi- 
culties of  class-teaching,  tends  in  the  middle  years  of  the 
American  as  of  the  English  municipal  school  system  to 
substitute  the  automatic  "interest"  of  the  class  in  the 
presence  of  the  teacher  for  the  conscious  effort  of  atten- 
tion. In  the  expensive  private  and  endowed  schools  of 
the  Eastern  states,  the  tendency  to  avoid  unnatural  in- 
tellectual effort  is  increased  by  the  wide-spread  desire  of 
the  well-to-do  American  that  his  children  shall  have  a 
"good  time."  In  these  schools,  again,  I  am  told  that  any 
boy  who  shows  signs  of  natural  athletic  excellence  is 
likely  to  be  prevented  from  acquiring  that  consciousness 
of  play  as  relief  which  is  the  necessary  balance  to  the 
consciousness  of  thought  as  effort.  For  such  a  boy  play 
means  a  severe  specialized  training  of  the  muscles  and  the 
lower  nerve-centers,  carried  out,  often  against  inclination, 
under  the  pressure  of  school  or  college  patriotism,  of  the 
public  opinion  of  his  fellows,  and  of  a  carefully  educated 
instinct  of  combat.  Such  "play"  may  leave  the  whole 
system  as  tired  as  does  the  speeded  machine-tending  of  a 
modern  factory,  and  almost  compels  those  who  have  gone 
through  it  to  find  rest,  if  not  recreation,  during  the  hours 
of  formal  study. 

American  students  have  also  told  me  that  the  long  visits 

Si 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

to  mountain  farms  and  forest  camps  which  occupy  the 
summer  months  of  so  many  well-to-do  New  York  and 
New  England  families,  are  so  arranged  as  to  ignore  the 
fact  that  a  healthy  boy  or  girl  requires  at  the  most  only  a 
few  weeks  of  complete  inertia  before  being  ready  to  begin 
mental  work  again.  No  books  are,  I  am  told,  taken  on  the 
summer  holidays,  and  a  student  may,  at  the  end  of  each 
September,  find  that  the  impulse  of  intellectual  keenness 
has  been  blunted  by  sheer  boredom.  As  a  result,  the 
clever  boy  who  goes  to  one  of  the  great  universities  of  the 
Eastern  states  at  eighteen,  either  from  a  public  high  school 
or  from  such  a  splendidly  equipped  preparatory  school  as 
Groton  or  St.  Paul's,  may  be,  as  far  as  I  have  been  able  to 
judge,  two  years  behind  an  equally  clever  boy  from  Win- 
chester, or  Rugby,  or  Manchester  Grammar  School  in  his 
experience  of  skilled  and  conscious  intellectual  effort. 
Childhood  lasted  much  later  into  life  in  the  England  of 
1910  than  in  the  England  of  Anselm  or  the  England  of 
Milton;  and  I  formed  the  impression  in  1910  that  child- 
hood among  the  well-to-do  classes  of  Eastern  America 
lasted  longer  than  in  England.19 

I  have  before  me  the  64th  Bulletin  of  the  American 
Federation  for  Child  Study.  As  regards  parents,  the 
Federation  state  that  their  object  is  "to  replace  Impulse 

19  The  fact  that  in  certain  narrow  sections  of  education  we  were,  in 
the  second  half  of  the  nineteenth  century,  more  successful  than  the  Amer- 
icans in  training  self-conscious  intellectual  effort  was  due  very  largely 
to  quite  distant  historical  causes.  The  Oxford  and  Cambridge  colleges, 
and  the  older  English  endowed  schools,  were  either  monastic  institutions 
in  their  origin,  or  were  formed  on  the  monastic  tradition.  The  student 
was  originally  conceived  of  as  sitting  in  his  cell  or  hi  the  scriptorium  of 
the  monastery.  The  American  educational  system  developed  in  the  main 
out  of  the  common  school  of  the  township  or  the  training  school  for 
preachers.  It  is  not,  I  think,  a  mere  difference  of  phraseology  which 

52 


SOCIAL  HERITAGE  IN  WORK  AND  THOUGHT 

with  Purpose."  As  regards  the  child,  the  Federation  say, 
"the  child  is  a  developing  organism,  not  a  miniature  man." 
It  may  be  that  twentieth-century  America  will  realize 
that,  though  a  child  is  a  "developing  organism,"  he  is  an 
organism  which  cannot  attain  adult  well-being  without 
the  acquirement  of  the  socially  inherited  accumulations 
of  civilization;  that  this  acquirement  will  not  effectively 
take  place  without  conscious  intellectual  effort  in  school 
and  college;  and  that,  therefore,  it  is  in  the  child  rather 
than  in  the  parent  that  the  "replacement  of  Impulse  with 
Purpose"  is  most  needed. 

makes  an  American  college  student  of  the  moral  sciences,  if  you  ask 
him  how  hard  he  is  working,  answer  that  he  is  taking  so  many  courses 
of  lectures,  and  not  mention  the  reading  which  accompanies  the  lectures; 
and  the  Oxford  or  Cambridge  student  answer  that  he  is  "reading"  four, 
or  five,  or  six  hours  a  day,  and  ignore  the  lectures  which  accompany  and 
illustrate  his  reading. 


53 


CHAPTER  III 
GROUP  COOPERATION 


IN  the  last  chapter  I  discussed  certain  socially  in- 
herited expedients  by  which  the  work  and  thought 
of  individual  human  beings  can  be  directed.  In  this 
chapter  I  shall  discuss  certain  socially  inherited  expedi- 
ents by  which  human  beings  can  direct  their  behavior 
when  cooperating  in  groups.  I  use  the  word  group  in  a 
strictly  quantitative  sense,  to  mean  a  body  of  human 
beings  numbering  from  three  or  four  up  to  about  thirty 
or  forty.  That  number  seems  to  have  been  the  ordinary 
limit  of  cooperation  by  primitive  mankind;  and  the  nat- 
ural range  of  our  senses  and  memory  makes  it  easy  for  us 
to  see,  hear,  and  recognize,  that  number  of  our  fellows. 
I  shall  postpone  to  later  chapters  the  discussion  of  co- 
operation among  bodies  of  men,  like  nations  or  associated 
nations,  whose  numbers  far  exceed  such  a  limit. 

Here,  as  in  the  last  chapter,  I  shall  attempt  to  show 
the  relation  between  natural  biologically  inherited,  and 
artificial  socially  inherited  forms  of  behavior.  Man  is  a 
loosely  and  intermittently  gregarious  animal,  who  inherits 
instincts  impelling  him  to  certain  natural  forms  of  group 

54 


GROUP  COOPERATION 

cooperation  in  such  acts  as  fighting,  hunting,  and  escap- 
ing from  danger.  The  world  contains  many  other  grega- 
rious species,  and  many  different  forms  of  natural  co- 
operation. When  bees  and  ants,  for  instance,  cooperate  in 
building  the  nest,  storing  food,  or  tending  the  young,  they 
are  naturally  impelled  to  a  form  of  cooperation  consisting 
of  a  division  of  labor  between  structurally  differing 
classes,  such  as  the  queens  and  drones  and  workers  among 
the  bees,  or  the  workers  and  soldiers  among  the  ants. 
Within  each  class  there  seems  to  be  little  cooperation  by 
leadership  and  obedience.  Each  individual  in  a  class 
either  goes  his  way  in  the  performance  of  a  routine  task, 
or,  as  when  half  a  dozen  ants  are  carrying  off  a  caterpillar, 
"butts  in"  at  any  point  where  he  can  lay  hold.  On  the 
other  hand,  in  the  case  of  grazing  mammals  like  wild  cat- 
tle and  deer,  one  male  of  the  herd  instinctively  leads,  and 
is  instinctively  obeyed  by  the  rest,  until  he  is  challenged 
to  a  fight  by  a  younger  male  and  dethroned.  In  the  case 
of  some  gregarious  hunting  mammals  (such  as  wolves  and 
dogs)  who  instinctively  communicate  with  each  other  by 
means  of  significant  sounds,  a  third  and  more  elastic  form 
of  natural  cooperation  appears.  There  may  or  may  not 
be  a  leading  male  whose  general  position  as  leader  will 
from  time  to  time  be  settled  by  a  duel  with  a  rival.  But 
any  one  member  of  the  pack  (or  many  members  simul- 
taneously) may,  by  significant  yelping,  claim  the  lead  at 
any  particular  moment  of  the  hunt.  If  the  older  wolves 
are  doubtful  about  the  scent,  the  whole  pack  will  follow 
the  clamorous  assertion  by  some  younger  wolf  that  he  or 
she  has  found  it,  without  that  fact  leading  to  an  immedi- 
ate fight  for  permanent  leadership. 

Man's  instincts,  in  this  as  in  many  other  respects,  are 

55 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

comparatively  varied  and  uncertain,  perhaps  because  in  his 
ancestry  many  minor  biological  variations  have  been  com- 
bined by  interbreeding.  But  the  prevailing  type  of  primi- 
tive human  cooperation  seems  to  have  been  much  more 
like  that  of  the  hunting-pack  than  that  either  of  the  ants 
or  of  the  cattle;  and  this  likeness  has  continued  even  after 
the  substitution  in  man  of  the  socially  inherited  fact  of 
language  for  instinctive  natural  cries  and  the  evolution  of 
a  "parasitic"  relation  between  language  and  some  of  our 
most  important  instincts.  A  human  group  is  naturally 
led  by  some  individual  of  mature  age  and  dominating 
character,  whose  confidence  in  himself  has  been  increased 
by  past  leadership,  and  whose  fellows  have  formed  the 
habit  of  obeying  him.  But  his  authority  is  never  com- 
plete or  unchallenged,  and  young  human  adults  are  sub- 
ject to  passionate  alternations  of  an  instinctive  impulse  to 
lead  and  an  instinctive  impulse  to  obey. 

Natural  human  group  cooperation  consists,  therefore, 
neither  of  the  furious  mass-industry  of  the  beehive,  nor  of 
the  blind  discipline  of  a  herd  of  cattle,  but  of  a  disorderly 
process  of  simultaneous  clamor  and  action.  We  share 
common  ancestors  both  with  the  baboons  and  the  gorillas ; 
but  our  natural  form  of  cooperation  is  rather  the  noisy 
bickerings  of  a  party  of  baboons  raiding  a  plantation 
than  the  gloomy  tyranny  of  the  "old  men"  in  a  group  of 
gorillas.  This  form  of  cooperation  has,  when  compared 
with  that  of  the  bees  and  the  cattle,  the  great  disadvan- 
tage of  wasting  energy  and  time,  but  the  greater  advan- 
tage of  making  cooperative  action  more  likely  to  fit  the 
changing  needs  of  each  situation.  The  wolf-pack,  instead 
of  having,  like  the  cattle-herd,  one  leader  with  one  pair 
of  eyes  and  ears,  or,  like  the  marching  ants,  no  leader 

56 


GROUP  COOPERATION 

responsible  for  their  direction  at  all,  has  twenty  potential 
leaders,  and  of  these  twenty  the  wolf  whose  nose  comes 
nearest  to  the  fresh  scent-trail  is  likely  to  claim  the  lead 
most  convincingly;  and  a  party  of  our  primitive  ancestors 
would  be  guided  even  more  by  clamor  and  less  by  disci- 
pline than  a  pack  of  wolves.1  Instinctive  human  group 
cooperation,  like  many  other  instinctive  forms  of  human 
behavior,  can  be  more  clearly  observed  among  the  half- 
grown  young  than  among  the  adults.  The  best  picture 
of  it  may  perhaps  be  seen  when  a  group  of  undisciplined 
twelve-year-old  schoolboys  chase  (with  half  articulate 
shouts  of  exhortation,  and  a  vigorous  but  confused  divi- 
sion of  function  directed  by  a  leading  boy)  a  stray  rat 
in  the  playground.  This  natural  form  of  human  group 
cooperation  is,  however,  fully  effective  only  when  three 
conditions  are  present:  The  cooperating  group  must  not 
be  too  large  or  too  scattered  to  hear  each  other's  cries  and 
see  each  other's  movements:  the  act  in  which  they  co- 
operate must  be  one  which  stimulates  a  cooperative  in- 
stinct: and  the  exactness  or  complexity  required  in  the 
cooperative  process  must  not  be  greater  than  is  possible 
in  purely  instinctive  behavior.  As  soon  as  the  coopera- 
tion of  a  larger  or  more  scattered  body  is  required,  or  the 
cooperative  act  is  one  that  does  not  naturally  stimulate 
a  cooperative  instinct,  or  precision,  and  complexity  is 
needed,  artificial  and  therefore  socially  inherited  forms  of 

1  To  some  of  my  readers  this  passage  may  recall  Mr.  Kipling's  con- 
temptuous comparison,  in  his  delightful  Jungle  Books,  of  the  "Bandar- 
log," the  chattering  democratic  monkeys,  with  the  unquestioning  jungle 
discipline  which  is  his  ideal,  as  it  is  that  of  General  Ludendorff.  Even 
in  the  jungle,  however,  the  undignified  monkeys  may  have  some  advan- 
tages over  the  herd  which  follows  a  single  obstinate  and  dignified  leader 
into  glorious  destruction. 

57 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

group  cooperation  must  be  used.  The  leader  is  appointed, 
not  by  his  natural  prominence  in  a  noisy  group  of  hunters 
or  warriors,  but  by  some  artificial  expedient  like  the  lot, 
or  primogeniture,  or  election.  He  utters,  not  inarticulate 
cries,  but  articulate  commands,  and  may  use  arguments 
(such  as  demonstrations  of  the  individual  advantage  which 
his  hearers  will  gain  from  obedience)  which,  while  they 
lead  to  cooperative  action,  do  not  necessarily  stimulate 
any  cooperative  instinct.  Or  he  may  use  an  artificial  form 
of  discipline  which  creates  a  mere  habit  of  obedience 
supported  by  fear  of  punishment.  But  beneath  such  arti- 
ficial forms  of  group  cooperation  our  natural  tendency 
towards  instinctive  competition  in  leadership  and  instinc- 
tive obedience  still  remains,  sometimes  strengthening  the 
artificial  form  and  sometimes  confusing  it,  or,  if  the  arti- 
ficial form  has  broken  down,  taking  its  place. 

In  natural  group  cooperation,  as  in  natural  individual 
behavior,  thought  and  action  are  not  clearly  distinguished. 
When  twenty  Mousterian  hunters  had  surrounded  a 
wounded  buffalo,  it  would  have  been  difficult  to  say 
whether  their  clamorous  cries  and  excited  gestures  consti- 
tuted, at  any  moment,  a  process  of  cooperative  thought 
or  of  cooperative  action.  As  soon,  however,  as  artificial 
methods  of  cooperation  were  introduced,  the  thought- 
process  which  prepared  a  plan  of  action  tended  to  become 
separated  from  the  cooperative  action  itself.  The  leader 
of  a  raiding  party  might  go  apart  for  a  period  either  of 
natural  reverie,  or  of  artificial  calculation  as  to  the  num- 
ber of  marches  required  to  reach  a  certain  point.  Or,  be- 
fore the  party  marched,  a  council  might  be  assembled, 
consisting  either  of  the  whole  party  or  of  a  few  of  the 
older  men,  to  advise  the  leader  and  help  in  the  calcula- 

58 


GROUP  COOPERATION 

tions.  If  emotion  in  such  a  council  reached  a  high  point 
of  intensity  there  may  have  occurred  a  certain  amount  of 
that  "telepathic"  exchange  of  mental  impressions  for  the 
possibility  of  which  among  human  beings  there  exists  a 
growing,  though  still  obscure,  mass  of  evidence. 

Thought,  however,  when  isolated  from  action  must 
have  been  through  the  early  stages  of  human  culture  in 
the  main  a  solitary  process.  The  artificial  organization 
of  cooperative  thought  lagged,  and  still  lags,  far  behind 
the  artificial  organization  of  cooperative  action.  It  was 
not  until  refinement  had  been  reached  in  the  development 
of  language,  and  until  many  ingenious  inventions  had 
been  made  of  dialectical  methods  and  of  opportunities  for 
continuous  discussion,  that  consciously  organized  co- 
operation in  thought  became  possible  even  as  an  ideal. 
And  the  ideal  of  genuine  intellectual  cooperation,  in  which 
men  combine  and  compare  each  other's  observations,  fol- 
low up  by  logical  processes  each  other's  suggestions,  and 
assign  to  each  of  a  group  of  cooperating  thinkers  the  part 
in  a  complex  inquiry  for  which  he  is  best  fitted  by  his  tal- 
ents and  training,  is  still  very  seldom  realized.  The  most 
experienced  statesman  may  still  remember  his  most  im- 
portant council  meetings  rather  as  conflicts  of  will  be- 
tween the  proposers  of  different  plans  than  as  opportu- 
nities for  cooperation  in  building  up  a  new  plan.2  Again, 
because  our  socially  inherited  forms  of  cooperation  in  act 
and  thought  are  unnatural,  they  produce  the  same  sort  of 
nervous  strain  as  do  the  artificial  forms  of  individual 
manual  and  mental  work.  After  a  committee  in  which 
he  has  kept  his  temper,  restrained  his  loquacity,  and 

2  See  my  Great  Society,  Chap.  XI. 

59 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

attended  closely  to  unwelcome  arguments,  a  man  feels  the 
need  of  "letting  himself  go"  under  less  formal  conditions. 

In  warfare  men  recognized,  earlier  than  in  the  arts  of 
peace,  both  the  advantages  and  the  difficulties  of  artificial 
forms  of  group  cooperation.  At  the  dawn  of  history  there 
must  have  been  many  now  forgotten  chiefs,  of  the  type 
of  Marius  or  Philip,  who  in  their  individual  thinking 
showed  the  military  advantage  of  artificial  logical  thought 
based  on  carefully  collected  information  and  ruthlessly 
pushed  to  its  conclusions,  over  the  alternations  of  hope, 
fear,  habit,  reverie,  quick  retort,  and  sudden  decision,  by 
which  a  primitive  war-leader  formed  his  purposes.  But 
Marlborpugh  and  Napoleon  showed  that  success  under 
more  modern  conditions  required  that  the  able  leader 
should  have  the  power  and  will  deliberately  to  choose  a 
group  of  officers  of  the  same  mental  quality  as  himself, 
and  by  a  careful  process  of  invention  with  regard  to  their 
relation  to  each  other  and  to  himself,  make  it  possible  for 
them  to  act  as  a  true  thought-organization.  By  a  combi- 
nation of  intellectual  authority,  intimate  intercourse,  and 
bold  delegation  of  function,  the  supreme  commander 
could  then  with  the  help  of  his  staff  think  effectively  of  an 
enormously  larger  body  of  facts  than  he  could  have  con- 
trolled in  his  own  single  brain.  And  the  memoirs  written 
after  the  war  may  show  that  those  staffs  were  most  suc- 
cessful who  most  consciously  recognized  the  nature  of 
their  work,  and  who  developed,  for  instance,  a  code  of 
manners  which  combined  tolerance  and  teachability  in 
receiving  the  ideas  of  others,  with  frankness,  and,  if 
necessary,  courageous  persistence,  in  introducing  one's 
own  ideas. 

The  problem  of  the  adequacy  for  group  cooperation  of 

60 


GROUP  COOPERATION 

our  existing  military  expedients  can  be  well  illustrated  by 
two  comparatively  simple  cases  in  the  war,  as  to  which 
we  happen  to  have  unusually  full  and  accurate  informa- 
tion. These  cases  are  recorded  in  the  First  Report  of  the 
British  Dardanelles  Commission  (1917),  and  the  Re- 
port of  the  Mesopotamia  Commission  (1917).  Each 
of  the  two  Reports  deals  with  a  decision  (proved  by  the 
event  to  have  been  mistaken)  formed  during  a  few  weeks 
or  months  by  a  small  group  of  statesmen  and  naval  and 
military  officers.  Every  important  member  of  each  group 
(except  Lord  Kitchener,  who  had  died)  appeared  before 
the  Commissions.  All  written  records  were  produced,  and 
nearly  every  witness  seems  to  have  tried  to  give  a  frank 
account  of  his  own  thoughts  and  sayings  and  feelings  as 
far  as  he  could  remember  them.  It  is  not  likely  that  the 
governments  of  other  belligerent  states  will  publish  re- 
ports of  equally  drastic  and  impartial  enquiries  into  the 
higher  conduct  of  the  war;  and  these  two  British  "blue- 
books"  may  provide  future  students  of  political  science 
with  the  best  available  account  of  the  psychological  proc- 
esses by  which,  under  the  simplest  conditions,  a  group 
responsible  for  the  direction  of  a  modern  non-militarized 
state  may  form  critical  military  decisions.  They  may  per- 
haps be  read  by  future  undergraduates  side  by  side  with 
Mr.  Maynard  Keynes's  descriptions  of  the  procedure  by 
which  the  Big  Four  made  peace  in  I9i8.3 

The  First  Dardanelles  Report  deals  with  the  formation 
in  London  during  January,  1915,  of  the  decision  to  force 
the  Dardanelles  by  a  naval  attack,  and  the  abandonment 
of  that  decision  in  March,  1915.  The  chief  figures  in  the 
Report  are  Lord  Kitchener,  Lord  Fisher,  Mr.  Asquith, 

3Keynes,  Economic  Consequences  of  the  Peace  (1919). 

61 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

and  Mr.  Churchill.  Lord  Kitchener  had  proved  himself 
in  his  Egyptian  and  South  African  campaigns  to  be  a 
trained  scientific  soldier,  capable  of  prolonged  efforts  of 
individual  thought,  and  possessed  of  special  knowledge 
and  aptitude  for  problems  of  military  supply.  He  was, 
however,  less  trained  and  personally  less  fitted  to  take 
part  in  the  process  of  cooperative  strategic  thought,  and 
hardly  trained  at  all  for  the  difficult  work  of  cooperation 
between  soldiers  and  politicians.4  In  the  War  Office  he 
seems  to  have  made  himself  obeyed,  not  by  argument, 
but  by  the  "magnetic"  effect  of  his  instinctive  impulse  to 
lead  over  other  men's  instinctive  impulse  to  obey.  The 
account  of  Lord  Kitchener  in  Mr.  Churchill's  evidence  is, 
indeed,  a  picture  of  instinctive  human  cooperation  which 
would  have  been  as  true  of  a  palaeolithic  war-party  led 
by  an  exceptionally  strong-willed  chief  as  it  was  of  the 
British  War  Council  in  1915.  "Scarcely  anyone  ever 
ventured  to  argue  with  him.  .  .  .  All-powerful,  imper- 
turbable, reserved,  he  dominated  absolutely  our  coun- 
sels" (pp.  3  and  4).  Mr.  Asquith  had  a  barrister's 
trained  faculty  of  coming  to  rapid  provisional  conclusions 

4  The  Final  Report  of  the  Dardanelles  Commission  (1917)  adds  that 
Lord  Kitchener  "held  a  strong  opinion  as  to  the  necessity  of  secrecy  in 
military  matters,  and  seldom  communicated  his  intentions  or  his  reasons 
for  action  to  anyone"  (p.  5).  It  is  also  indicated  in  the  First  Report 
that  he  never  understood  the  quantitative  limitations  of  a  single  leader. 
General  Murray  is  quoted  for  the  statement  that  "Lord  Kitchener  acted 
very  much  as  his  own  Chief  of  the  Staff"  (p.  6),  and  the  Report  says, 
"there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  principle  of  centralization  was  pushed 
to  an  extreme  point  by  Lord  Kitchener.  .  .  .  But  it  was  unsuitable  to 
a  stronger  force  than  that  which  Lord  Kitchener  commanded  in  the 
Soudan.  ...  Its  result  was  to  throw  into  the  hands  of  one  man  an 
amount  of  work  with  which  no  individual,  however  capable,  could  hope 
to  cope  successfully"  (p.  13). 

62 


GROUP  COOPERATION 

by  largely  subconscious  methods  of  inference,  and  a  bar- 
rister's trained  caution  in  avoiding  as  long  as  possible  any 
decision  which  further  information  or  further  half-con- 
scious reflection  might  indicate  as  mistaken.  He  was 
sixty-two  years  old  and  his  personal  psychological  idio- 
syncrasies probably  increased  his  professional  tendency 
towards  procrastination.  Lord  Fisher  was  seventy-four 
years  old.  He  was  a  sailor  of  genius,  who,  like  Lord  Kitch- 
ener, had  been  in  the  habit  of  forming  his  own  decisions 
by  intense  individual  thought,  and  imposing  those  de- 
cisions on  others  by  the  natural  weight  of  his  will  to  lead. 
Mr.  Churchill,  as  readers  of  his  books  and  speeches  know, 
is  a  born  literary  artist,  with  an  artist's  tendency  to  com- 
bine thought  and  emotion  subconsciously,  rather  than 
consciously  to  coordinate  them.  Admiral  May  said,  "Mr. 
Churchill  was  very  keen  on  his  own  views"  (p.  27).  Mr. 
Churchill  will  be  long  remembered  as  having  called  (in 
the  House  of  Commons,  November  15,  1915)  the  Darda- 
nelles attack  a  "legitimate  war  gamble."  By  this  he  prob- 
ably meant  that  he  had  estimated  the  attack  to  have  rather 
more  than  an  even  chance  of  success.  If  he  had  made  a 
quantitative  study  of  the  working  of  a  temperament  like 
his  own,  he  would  have  learnt  not  to  treat  any  plan  of  his 
as  a  "legitimate  gamble"  unless  it  appeared  to  him  to 
have  at  least  a  three-to-one  chance  of  success.  At  elec- 
tions political  agents  tell  "keen"  candidates  to  make  an 
allowance  about  as  great  as  that  for  their  "personal  fac- 
tor."5 

The  organization  of  thought  in  the  War  Council  con- 
sisted of  little  more  than  the  acceptance  by  all  its  mem- 
bers of  the  implications  (not  always  the  same)  which 

e  See  also  my  Great  Society,  Chap.  X. 

63 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

each  of  them  believed  to  be  contained  in  the  words  "ex- 
pert" and  "minister."  Among  those  implications  was 
more  or  less  consciously  included  the  assumption  that 
every  war-problem  could  be  subdivided  into  a  series  of 
technical  problems  and  sub-problems,  naval,  military,  dip- 
lomatic, engineering,  artillery,  geographical,  medical,  etc. 
Each  technical  problem  was  to  be  covered  by  its  own  body 
of  experts,  and  each  expert  could,  it  was  assumed,  be 
trusted  so  to  use  the  methods  of  artificial  scientific  thought 
as  to  predict  accurately  the  results  on  his  special  factor 
of  any  proposed  action.  The  whole  body  was  then  to  ex- 
amine and  coordinate  the  conclusions  of  the  experts.  In 
any  large  matter,  all  the  members,  with  the  possible  ex- 
ception of  those  who  attended  merely  as  experts,  were  to 
be  responsible  for  forming  (or  advising  the  Cabinet  to 
form)  final  decisions.  Lord  Kitchener,  being  Secretary 
for  War,  attended  the  Council  both  as  minister  and  as 
expert,  and  was  accompanied  by  Sir  James  Murray  as 
fellow-expert.  Lord  Fisher  and  Admiral  Sir  Arthur  Wil- 
son attended  as  experts  only. 

The  naval  and  military  officers  were  accustomed  to 
the  procedure  of  small  official  "boards,"  composed  of  offi- 
cers who  are  called  on  for  their  opinions  in  rotation,  and 
where  the  decision  is  formed  and  announced  by  the  pre- 
siding senior  officer.  Mr.  Asquith  and  Mr.  Churchill  were 
accustomed  in  the  Cabinet  to  civilian  committee-proce- 
dure, where  no  member  is  called  on  to  speak,  but  any 
member  may  insist  on  his  right  to  speak,  and  where,  if  a 
vote  is  taken,  the  decision  depends  on  a  majority  of  equal 
votes.  As  ministers  in  their  own  departments  they  were 
accustomed  to  hear  or  read  the  opinions  of  their  expert 
advisers,  and  then  to  come  individually  to  an  independent 

64 


GROUP  COOPERATION 

and  final  conclusion.  All  the  members  of  the  Council, 
with  the  important  exception  of  Lord  Kitchener,  had 
worked  together  before  the  war  on  the  Cabinet  Commit- 
tee of  Imperial  Defense,  which  had  existed  since  1904. 
But  no  one  of  them  seems  to  have  realized  that  an  organi- 
zation, consisting  of  persons  of  such  different  training, 
and  exercising  powers  of  such  terrific  importance,  needed 
a  fundamental  analysis  of  the  relations  between  its  mem- 
bers, leading  to  a  scheme  of  rules  and  principles  under- 
stood and  explicitly  agreed  to  by  them  all.  The  efficient 
formation  of  such  a  scheme  might  have  involved  a  certain 
amount  of  actual  invention.  It  might  even  have  been 
necessary  to  invent  new  words  or  meanings  for  words, 
since  an  agreed  terminology  of  the  kind  needed  does  not 
exist.  But  men,  particularly  if  they  belong  to  different 
social  or  official  groups,  are  shy  and  awkward  in  talking 
about  things  of  the  mind;  so  that  no  analysis  or  invention 
of  methods  took  place,  and  the  members  of  the  Council 
came  into  the  room  each  day  unaware  that  they  held  com- 
pletely different  conceptions  as  to  their  relations  to  each 
other.  Lord  Fisher  said  in  evidence,  "we  are  not  mem- 
bers of  the  War  Council.  .  .  .  We  were  the  experts 
there  who  were  to  open  their  mouths  when  told  to"  (p. 
7).  Mr.  Churchill,  on  the  other  hand,  spoke  of  his  "naval 
colleagues"  as  having  "the  right,  the  knowledge,  and  the 
power  to  correct  me  or  dissent  from  what  I  said,"  and  as 
"fully  cognizant  of  their  rights"  (p.  7).  Mr.  Balfour, 
when  asked  whether  the  experts  "were  under  any  obliga- 
tion to  initiate  opinions,"  said  that  "that  would  depend 
on  the  view  the  Chairman  [Mr.  Asquith]  took  of  their 
duties.  .  .  .  It  is  the  business  of  the  Chairman  to  see 
that  nothing  is  passed  over  their  heads  on  which  they  have 

65 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

an  opinion  until  the  opinion  has  been  extracted."  But 
"the  means  for  letting  their  views  be  known  .  .  .  need 
not  necessarily  be  an  interruption  of  the  proceedings, 
thrusting  themselves  in,  as  it  were,  in  the  discussion, 
though  that  would  be  the  natural  method  of  doing  it"  (pp. 
7  and  8).  Lord  Haldane  said,  with  regard  to  Lord  Fisher, 
"we  all  looked  on  him  as  there  to  take  counsel  with  us. 
.  .  .  Not  one  of  us  was  asked  to  speak.  Questions 
were  not  put  round"  (pp.  8  and  9).  Mr.  Asquith  said, 
"I  should  have  expected  any  of  the  experts  there,  if  they 
entertained  a  strong  personal  view  on  their  own  expert 
authority,  to  express  it"  (p.  9).  Lord  Crewe  and  Lord 
Haldane  agreed  that  "the  political  members  of  the  Com- 
mittee did  too  much  of  the  talking,  and  the  expert  mem- 
bers as  a  rule  too  little"  (p.  9).  Sir  James  Murray  said, 
"I  sometimes  left  the  War  Council  with  a  very  indistinct 
idea  of  any  decision  having  been  arrived  at  at  all"  (p.  9). 
The  members  of  the  Council,  indeed,  were  never  clear  as 
to  whether  they  were  all  and  always  members  of  a 
"thought-organization,"  or  whether  they,  or  some  of  them, 
were  (since  the  Cabinet  invariably  accepted  their  advice) 
members  of  a  final  "will-organization."  When  they  did 
act  as  a  "will-organization"  they  seem  to  have  reverted 
(except  when  Lord  Kitchener  without  opposition  led 
them)  to  that  form  of  cooperation  in  a  primitive  war- 
party  in  which  leadership  is  not  complete,  and  a  confused 
conflict  is  going  on,  which  will  be  followed  by  the  yielding 
of  the  less  insistent  to  the  more  insistent  clamor.  Mr. 
Churchill,  for  instance,  speaking  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons in  the  Dardanelles  debate,  said,  "it  was  .  .  .  one 
long,  agonizing  wearying  struggle  to  get  every  ship,  every 
soldier,  every  gun,  and  every  round  of  ammunition  for 

66 


GROUP  COOPERATION 

the  Dardanelles"  (March  20,  1917).  The  possible  pres- 
ence of  further  military  experts  meant  to  Mr.  Churchill, 
not  additional  evidence  for  the  formation  by  logical 
methods  of  an  exact  conclusion,  but  additional  force  be- 
hind the  will  of  his  opponents.  "General  Headquarters," 
he  said,  "would  have  sent  their  experts  clattering  over  to 
reinforce  this  opinion,  and  no  doubt  General  Joffre  would 
have  been  called  in  aid  to  write  the  strongest  letters  of 
protest.  After  a  ten  days'  or  a  fortnight's  discussion  you 
would  have  been  back  to  where  you  started"  (ibid.). 
There  was  a  moment  of  intense  conflict  on  the  day  of  the 
final  decision,  when  Lord  Fisher  "rose  from  his  seat  with 
the  intention  ...  of  intimating  his  intention  to  re- 
sign," and  Lord  Kitchener  "at  the  same  time  rose  from 
his  seat,  and,  before  Lord  Fisher  could  leave  the  room, 
had  some  private  conversation  with  him  at  the  window. 
Eventually,  according  to  a  note  made  by  Lord  Fisher  at 
the  time,  the  latter  reluctantly  gave  way  to  Lord  Kitch- 
ener's entreaty  and  resumed  his  seat"  (p.  27). 

Now,  when  men  form  decisions  by  means  of  the  "nat- 
ural" method  of  a  conflict  of  wills,  followed  either  by  an 
instinctive  compromise  or  by  the  instinctive  dominance 
of  the  stronger  will,  their  mental  processes  are  largely 
subconscious,  and  they  are  unable  to  give  (as  those  often 
can  who  are  cooperating  in  "artificial"  logical  thought) 
an  account  of  them  which  can  be  followed  by  others  and 
tested  by  logical  rules.  They  are  unable  to  explain  either 
the  steps  by  which  their  forecast  of  results  was  reached, 
or  the  relation  of  their  final  decision  to  their  forecast  of 
results.  Lord  Fisher,  for  instance,  gave  an  account  of  his 
own  state  of  mind  while  he  was  both  estimating  the 
chances  of  a  naval  attack  and  deciding  whether  he  should 

67 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

acquiesce  in  the  proposal  to  undertake  it;  and  other  wit- 
nesses gave  their  own  impressions  of  Lord  Fisher's  state 
of  mind.  It  was,  one  gathers,  rather  one  of  growing  emo- 
tional discomfort  than  one  of  growing  clearness  in  thought 
and  will.  He  described  himself  as  "instinctively  against" 
a  purely  naval  attack  (p.  50),  and  Mr.  Churchill  said,  "I 
could  see  that  Lord  Fisher  was  increasingly  worried  about 
the  Dardanelles  situation"  (p.  26).  Lord  Kitchener's 
opposition  to  the  employment  of  soldiers  in  the  attack 
"underwent  a  considerable  change"  (p.  31),  and  by 
March  3,  1915,  "had  apparently  weakened"  (p.  33).  The 
argument  about  our  prestige  in  the  East  "grew  in  impor- 
tance" (p.  30),  and  General  Callwell  is  quoted  as  saying, 
with  regard  to  a  later  stage  in  the  expedition,  that  "we 
drifted  into  the  big  military  attack"  (p.  30). 

A  certain  amount  of  such  "natural  thought"  and  of  such 
a  "natural"  combination  of  impulse  and  thought  is,  I  be- 
lieve, both  inevitable,  and,  when  once  the  sphere  of  its 
utility  is  understood,  useful.  One  can  imagine  a  future 
body  of  soldiers  and  statesmen  all  of  whom  had  been 
trained  from  their  school-days  to  understand  and  respect 
the  future  art  of  rational  corporate  action.  They  might 
agree  among  themselves  that  the  "scientific"  logic  of  sub- 
divided expertise  was  not  by  itself  a  sufficient  guide  in 
the  estimation  and  coordination  of  such  factors  as  the  feel- 
ings of  suspicious  allies  and  inarticulate  eastern  popula- 
tions. They  might  further  agree  that,  after  allowing  for 
differences  of  temperament,  the  fact  that  one  member  of  a 
council  felt  strongly  on  a  point  at  issue,  and  another  mem- 
ber felt  doubtfully  about  it,  should  be  recognized  as  an 
important  element  in  forming  both  intellectual  and  practi- 
cal decisions.  But  their  agreement  on  such  points  in  the 

68 


GROUP  COOPERATION 

psychology  of  rational  purpose  would  be  subject  to  a 
recognition  of  the  undiminished  authority  of  the  scientific 
logic  of  expertise  within  its  own  sphere.  In  the  Darda- 
nelles case,  even  the  one  principle  on  which  the  whole 
Council  was  agreed — that  each  expert  should  be  responsi- 
ble for  all  technical  decisions  within  the  sphere  of  his  ex- 
pertise— was  half-consciously  ignored.  The  decision  en- 
quired into  seems  to  have  been  ultimately  due  to  Lord 
Kitchener's  personal  and  non-expert  impression  that  a 
purely  naval  attack  would  succeed  (p.  16).  It  was  only 
when  heavy  losses  of  ships  and  men  had  occurred  that  the 
naval  experts  asserted  their  rights,  and  the  purely  naval 
attack  was,  on  March  23,  1915,  abandoned. 

The  Mesopotamia  Report  describes  the  cooperation  of 
a  body  of  ministers  and  officials,  not  gathered  day  by  day 
in  a  Whitehall  council  room,  but  strung  out  along  the  line, 
Simla,  Bombay,  Mesopotamia,  London,  and  mainly  com- 
municating with  each  other  by  telegraph.  Those  who 
were  responsible  for  the  calamitous  first  advance  on  Bagh- 
dad were  not  all,  as  those  responsible  for  the  Dardanelles 
naval  attack  were,  men  of  very  unusual  intellectual  ability 
and  force  of  character.  Some  of  them  were  in  that  re- 
spect not  much  above  the  average,  though  even  they  were 
professional  men  high  in  their  professions.  One  is  con- 
stantly reminded  in  reading  the  Mesopotamia  Report  that 
the  professional  officers  of  the  British  army  before  1914 
were  mainly  drawn  from  those  scholars  who  were  most  in- 
fluenced by  the  conventional  traditions  of  the  middle 
forms  of  the  English  "public  schools,"  and  least  influenced 
by  the  intellectual  stimulus  which  is  often  felt  in  the  high- 
est forms.  According  to  that  tradition  all  conscious  and 
systematic  effort  in  the  use  of  the  mind  is  apt  to  be  treated 

69 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

as  "bad  form."  The  spontaneous  brilliance  of  a  clever 
athlete  in  doing  a  short  composition  is  tolerated.  To  aim 
at  more  is  to  be  a  "smug."6  Since  leaving  school  and  pass- 
ing their  military  examinations  most  of  these  officers  had 
lived  "natural"  intellectual  lives  in  the  presence  of  the 
unnatural  facts  of  the  modern  world  and  modern  warfare. 
They  had  given  no  more  conscious  thought  to  their  own 
mental  processes  than  a  healthy  boy  of  twelve  gives  to  the 
functions  of  his  pancreas.  Many  of  them  even  seemed 
unaware  of  the  need  of  that  effort  of  will  which  alone  can 
substitute  a  systematic  exploration  of  the  conditions  of 
any  proposed  action  for  passive  dependence  on  the  stimu- 
lus to  thought  given  by  such  facts  as  may  casually  reach 
the  thinker.  Again  and  again  the  Commissioners  call  at- 
tention to  the  "passive  attitude"  (p.  83)  of  officers,  to 
their  want  of  "prescience  and  enterprise"  (p.  55)  and 
"foresight"  (p.  50) ;  or  say  that  they  did  not  "think  of 
definitely  asking"  this  (p.  31),  or  "were  not  very  helpful 
in  suggesting  substitutes"  for  that  (p.  7).  The  Parlia- 
mentary debates  on  the  Mesopotamia  Report  show  also 
how  difficult  it  is  for  Englishmen  to  bring  defects  in  the 
conduct  of  the  mind  into  their  habitual  moral  categories 
of  right  and  wrong.  It  seemed  to  many  of  the  members 
of  Parliament  unjust  to  punish  men  for  mistakes  due  to 
forms  of  mental  conduct  which  the  offenders  would  not 

6  Even  when  the  British  Staff  College  was  started  after  the  Crimean 
War  "it  was  looked  on  with  some  disfavor  by  the  old  officers  because 
it  was  a  new-fangled  notion,  and  by  the  younger  officers  as  a  'mug's 
game'  ...  [at  one  time]  it  got  about  among  us  that  no  one  could  hope 
to  get  a  good  report  from  the  Staff  College,  or  any  chance  of  a  staff 
appointment  in  the  future,  unless  he  rode  regularly  with  the  Staff  Col- 
lege Drag  Hounds."  Sir  George  Younghusband,  A  Soldier's  Memories 
(1917),  pp.  115  and  117. 

70 


GROUP  COOPERATION 

recognize  as  moral  offenses.  Lord  Loreburn,  the  very 
able  ex-Lord  Chancellor,  said  that  the  blundering  was 
generally  "honest  blundering"  (July  13,  1917).  To  Lord 
Islington  the  "paralyzing  officialdom"  (July  n,  1917)  of 
General  Duff  seemed  rather  a  misfortune  than  an  offense. 
It  was  easier  to  form  moral  judgments  when  one  thought 
in  terms  of  commercial  tradition,  and  therefore  could  de- 
scribe what  had  happened  as  a  want  of  "elementary  busi- 
ness precautions"  (Loreburn,  July  7,  1917). 

If  many  of  the  officers  concerned  in  the  Mesopotamia 
Expedition  were  untrained  for  the  work  of  artificial  indi- 
vidual thought,  and  unprovided  with  any  ideals  of  con- 
duct with  regard  to  it,  they  were  still  more  untrained  for 
the  work  of  cooperative  thought.  The  most  necessary 
rule  in  that  process  is  absolute  frankness  among  the  co- 
operating thinkers.  But  the  report  speaks  of  "want  of 
frankness"  (p.  74)  and  quotes  as  "disingenuous"  a  letter 
from  one  military  secretary  in  India  to  another,  pointing 
out  that,  if  the  Indian  authorities  wished  to  get  their  way, 
it  would  be  better  not  to  show  their  whole  minds  to  the 
Home  authorities  (p.  41).  Another  necessary  rule  is  that 
anyone  who  is  to  take  part  in  the  give  and  take  of  thought 
in  cooperation  with  others  must  train  himself  to  attach  no 
more  initial  weight  to  his  own  ideas  than  to  those  of 
others,  and  must  strive  to  overcome  that  quasi-Freudian 
impulse  which  makes  him  first  dislike  his  colleague  for 
making  a  new  suggestion,  and  then  dislike  the  suggestion 
because  his  colleague  has  made  it.  But  the  report  says 
that  "the  Indian  government  was  at  first  lukewarm  on  a 
proposition  which  it  did  not  originate"  (p.  97)  and  quotes 
the  statement  that  "the  Mesopotamia  campaign  was  be- 
lieved to  be  a  side-show  and  no  man's  child"  (p.  96). 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

Some  of  the  evidence  given  in  those  sections  of  the  Report 
which  deal  with  the  treatment  of  the  wounded  is  specially 
significant.  Major  R.  Markham  Carter,  for  instance,  was 
an  Indian  army  doctor  as  to  whom  the  Report  says,  "his 
sense  of  duty  seems  to  be  most  commendable  and  he  was 
fertile  and  resourceful  in  suggesting  remedies"  (p.  93). 
Major  Carter  insisted  on  seeing  the  Commander  of  the 
expedition  in  order  to  tell  him  of  the  breakdown  of  medi- 
cal arrangements  (p.  77)  and  sent  to  Delhi  a  report  with 
a  "vivid  account"  of  the  sufferings  of  the  wounded  (p. 
78).  Surgeon-General  Hathaway  said  that  the  Army 
Commander  ordered  him  to  deal  with  Major  Carter  "with 
reference  to  his  objectionable  remarks"  (p  81)  and  Gen- 
eral Cowper,  the  Quartermaster-General,  said,  "I  threat- 
ened to  put  him  under  arrest,  and  I  said  that  I  would  get 
his  hospital  ship  taken  away  from  him  for  a  meddlesome 
interfering  faddist"  (p.  81).  The  Report  gives  these 
facts  as  instances  of  "an  unpleasant  feature  in  the  Meso- 
potamia Campaign,  viz.,  the  active  intolerance  of  all  criti- 
cism of  defects  or  suggestions  of  reform"  (p.  81).  A 
statement  is  quoted  that  "the  Indian  system  ...  al- 
lows officers  to  think  .  .  .  that  there  is  more  merit  to 
be  obtained  by  keeping  quiet  and  not  worrying  the  higher 
authorities  than  by  asking  for  what  is  necessary"  (p.  105) 
and  mention  is  made  of  "the  policy  of  suppressing  the  un- 
pleasant" (p.  80).  The  "atmosphere  very  unfavorable  to 
reforming  innovation"  (p.  74)  is  so  much  taken  for 
granted,  that  men  whose  good  suggestions  have  been  re- 
jected are  blamed  in  the  Report  for  not  showing  a  degree 
of  obstinate  persistence  which  would  have  been  unneces- 
sary among  colleagues  who  were  accustomed  to  pick  up 
each  other's  ideas.  General  Townshend,  for  instance, 

72 


GROUP  COOPERATION 

"does  not  seem  to  have  pressed  his  objections  hard"  (p. 
27).  Surgeon- General  Hathaway  did  not  urge  "even  his 
small  request  ...  for  an  improvised  hospital  steamer 
or  tug  .  .  .  persistently  or  with  sufficient  emphasis"  (p. 

57). 

The  Dardanelles  disaster  was  caused  in  large  part  by 
the  fact  that  the  conditions  of  oral  discussion  between 
politicians  and  experts  were  not  properly  analyzed.  In 
the  Mesopotamia  case  the  politicians  were  puzzled  as  to 
the  degree  of  final  authority  which  they  should  give  to 
definite  written  or  telegraphed  military  proposals.  Mr. 
Montagu  (then  Secretary  for  India)  said  in  the  House 
of  Commons  (July  12,  1917),  "among  many  things  we 
have  never  decided  in  this  country  are  the  relations  be- 
tween politicians  and  soldiers."  Lord  Crewe  said,  "War 
is  politics,  if  it  is  not  to  be  mere  scalp-hunting"  (July  7, 
1917).  But  Lord  Hardinge  was  not  sure  of  the  point 
where  "civilian  interference  with  military  plans"  (July  3, 
1917)  was  permissible,  and  Mr.  J.  H.  Thomas,  M.P.,  the 
direct-minded  secretary  of  the  Railway-men's  Trade 
Union  said,  "We  are  told,  first,  that  if  civilians  interfere 
with  the  military  they  are  to  be  condemned,  and  we  are 
told  afterwards  that  if  they  do  not  interfere  they  are 
equally  to  be  condemned"  (July  18,  I9i7).7 

The  Dardanelles  Report  deals  almost  solely  with  mili- 
tary and  naval  problems.  Only  the  slightest  reference  is 
made  to  such  "political"  questions  as  the  feelings  and  de- 
sires of  our  allies  and  the  Greeks.  The  Mesopotamia  Re- 

7  The  Mesopotamia  Report  incidentally  mentions  "the  introduction 
by  the  Cabinet  of  political  considerations  into  the  calculations  of  their 
military  advisers,"  and  says,  "we  do  not  wish  to  imply  that  this  widen- 
ing of  their  survey  is  to  be  condemned"  (p.  26) — which  is  not  very 
helpful. 

73 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

port  indicates  a  tendency  to  confine  the  enquiry  within 
much  the  same  limits.  This  must  have  been  partly  due 
to  a  sense  that  it  was  imprudent  to  publish  criticisms  of 
our  Russian  allies,  or  apprehensions  as  to  the  loyalty  of 
our  Indian  fellow-subjects.  It  may  have  been  partly  due 
to  the  fact  that  our  intellectual  atmosphere  is  as  yet  un- 
influenced by  the  more  complex  forms  of  the  art  of 
thought,  and  that  commissioners  who  were  trying  to  pro- 
duce a  clear  report  would  find  it  difficult  to  coordinate  the 
comparatively  "immeasurable"  factors  of  political  feeling 
with  the  comparatively  "measurable"  factors  of  military 
risk  and  advantage.  In  the  Parliamentary  debates  on  the 
Mesopotamia  Report  in  1917,  it  was  urged,  I  think  fairly, 
that  this  limitation  had  resulted  in  a  certain  amount  of 
injustice  to  Lord  Hardinge,  who  at  the  time  of  the  Meso- 
potamia decision  was  Viceroy  of  India.  Behind  that  de- 
bate one  could  detect  not  only  the  logical  problem  of  treat- 
ing feeling  as  part  of  the  subject-matter  of  thought,  but 
also  the  psychologico-logical  problem  of  the  function  of 
feeling  in  the  process  of  thought.  The  charge  against 
Lord  Hardinge  was  that  he  had  not  called  on  the  people 
of  India  for  the  same  extremity  of  sacrifice  in  men  and 
money  as  had  been  enforced  in  Britain.  His  answer  was, 
in  effect,  that  he  had  done  as  much  as  in  presence  of  the 
facts  of  Indian  feeling  he  considered  to  be  safe.  Now 
Lord  Hardinge  was,  as  was  admitted  throughout  the  de- 
bate, "the  most  popular  viceroy  of  modern  times  ...  a 
viceroy  on  whose  sympathy  and  assistance  Indians  could 
rely"  (Montagu,  July  12).  Lord  Islington,  with  his  long 
Indian  experience,  said  that  Lord  Hardinge 's  "personal 
influence  controlled  the  tendency  to  revolt"  (July  n), 
and  Lord  Montagu  of  Beaulieu,  who  had  just  returned 

74 


GROUP  COOPERATION 

from  India,  said,  "it  was  largely  his  personal  influence 
which  held  the  country  together"  (July  12).  Lord 
Hardinge  said,  "I  trusted  the  people  of  India"  (July  3). 
Obviously  Lord  Hardinge's  "sympathy"  was  a  powerful 
factor  in  the  success  of  the  Indian  government  in  prevent- 
ing a  rising.  But  what  was  the  value  of  that  sympathy  in 
the  process  by  which  Lord  Hardinge  estimated  the  bal- 
ance of  forces  in  the  situation?  Was  it  positive,  or  nega- 
tive, or  indifferent?  Some  men  would  expect  a  priori  that 
Lord  Hardinge's  conscious  sympathy  with  and  affection 
for  the  Indian  people  would  act  as  a  hindrance  in  the  in- 
tellectual process  of  estimating  forces,  and  that  a  man  like 
Lord  Curzon,  who  might  successfully  claim  to  have  driven 
below  consciousness  a  good  many  of  his  sympathies, 
would  have  been  likely  to  estimate  the  situation  more  cor- 
rectly. Others  might  say  that  sympathy  and  judgment  are 
facts  so  completely  unrelated  to  each  other  that  no  one 
learns  anything  about  a  man's  judgment  by  learning  about 
his  sympathy.  Or,  finally,  one  may  believe  that  (as  I  have 
already  urged),  in  the  case  of  two  men  of  equal  powers  of 
logical  judgment,  both  of  whom  are  fully  conscious  of  the 
distinction  in  themselves  between  the  psychological  proc- 
esses of  emotion  and  thought,  the  man  of  the  more  con- 
scious, more  sensitive,  and  wider  sympathies  is  the  more 
likely,  not  only  to  desire  the  right  ends,  but  to  discover  the 
right  means.  The  nature  of  the  problem  becomes  clearer 
if  one  thinks,  not  of  the  Dardanelles  and  Mesopotamia  de- 
cisions, but  of  the  decisions  taken  by  the  governing  group 
in  Germany  at  the  outbreak  and  during  the  continuance  of 
the  war.  Most  Germans  would  now  admit  that  the  ulti- 
matum to  Russia,  the  invasion  of  Belgium,  and  the  acts 

75 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

which  brought  America  into  the  war  were  based  upon  un- 
sound calculations  as  to  their  probable  effects.  In  forming 
strategical  military  decisions  the  German  General  Staff  was 
an  instrument  of  unprecedented  efficiency.  Those  respon- 
sible for  the  intellectual  direction  of  the  fighting  were 
chosen  with  the  utmost  care  and  ruthlessly  replaced  in  case 
of  failure.  Many  of  the  ablest  members  of  the  Prussian 
governing  classes  had  in  the  generation  before  the  war  be- 
come professional  soldiers.  They  were  trained  to  aim,  con- 
sciously and  without  British  snobbery  or  shyness,  at  intel- 
lectual integrity  and  thoroughness.  Many  Englishmen, 
when  they  read,  for  instance,  the  report  on  the  Somme 
fighting  of  General  Sixt  von  Arnim  in  1916,  found  in  it 
qualities  which  were  new  to  their  whole  conception  of  the 
military  mind.  The  miscalculation  involved  in  the  series 
of  decisions  in  July,  1914,  which  made  the  war  inevitable, 
was  not  due  to  technical  military  inefficiency,  but  mainly 
to  the  fact  that  the  narrowing  of  human  sympathy  which 
was  consciously  involved  in  much  of  the  training  of  indi- 
vidual Prussian  civil  or  military  Realpolitiker  involved 
also  a  narrowing  of  their  thoughts,  and  a  lessening  of  the 
ultimate  efficiency  of  any  cooperating  group  of  which 
they  formed  part. 


76 


CHAPTER  IV 
THE  NATION  AS  IDEA  AND  FACT 


I  NOW  turn  from  cooperation  among  members  of  a 
group  to  cooperation  among  members  of  a  nation, 
leaving  till  a  later  chapter  (Chapter  IX)  the  larger 
question  of  cooperation  among  human  beings  belonging  to 
two  or  more  or  all  nations.    I  here  use  the  word  "nation," 
as  I  used  the  word  "group"  in  the  last  chapter,  merely 
as  a  convenient  term  of  magnitude;  by  a  "nation"  I  mean 
one  of  those  organized  communities  of  twenty  million  to 
three  hundred  million  inhabitants  which  include  the  great 
majority  of  mankind. 

The  change  of  scale  from  group  to  nation  involves  a 
change  in  the  form  and  character  of  the  cooperative  proc- 
ess. National  cooperation  is  necessarily  much  more  arti- 
ficial, more  dependent  on  socially  inherited  knowledge 
and  conscious  effort,  than  is  group  cooperation.  In  order 
to  realize  this,  we  must,  again  and  again,  remind  ourselves 
of  the  quantitative  limitations  of  all  the  factors  in  the  hu- 
man type.  We  are  apt  to  think  of  human  societies  as  we 
think  of  equilateral  triangles.  We  can  imagine  an  equi- 
lateral triangle  with  sides  either  an  inch  long  or  a  hundred 

77 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

miles  long,  and  in  either  case  its  qualities  as  an  equilateral 
triangle  will  be  the  same.  But  if  we  imagine  a  heap  of 
sand  composed  of  sand-grains,  each  grain  being  about  a 
hundredth  of  an  inch  in  diameter,  we  must  remember  that 
a  change  of  size  in  the  heap  may  change  the  relation  be- 
tween the  grains,  and  therefore  the  character  of  the  heap. 
A  heap  of  twenty  grains  of  sand  will  behave  differently 
from  a  heap  of  twenty  million  grains.  It  will,  for  in- 
stance, have  a  different  "angle  of  repose." 

In  a  human  society  the  average  size  of  the  units  must 
be  taken  by  the  social  and  political  thinker  as  fixed.  Un- 
less we  are  prepared  to  wait  for  twenty  generations  of 
bold  eugenic  experiment,  we  cannot  make  the  mean  height 
of  a  body  of  Englishmen  or  North  Americans  appreciably 
more  than  five  feet  eight  inches,  or  the  mean  length  of 
their  stride  more  than  thirty  inches.  The  natural  range 
of  our  memory  and  the  natural  strength  and  range  of  our 
emotions  are  fixed  by  similar  limits.  A  group  of  a  dozen 
statesmen  or  generals  assembled  in  one  place  can  all,  like 
a  primitive  hunting-party,  hear  each  other's  voices  and 
see  each  other's  movements.  They  may  find  it  necessary 
to  use  artificial  methods  of  thought  and  consultation  and 
decision.  But,  even  when  engaged  in  artificial  forms  of 
cooperation,  they  still  react  naturally  to  direct  percep- 
tions of  each  other;  and  those  who  have  once  cooperated 
in  such  a  group  can,  when  they  are  separated,  remember 
each  other  as  clearly  pictured  individuals  and  react  to  that 
remembrance.  The  largest  visible  crowd  is,  however, 
only  a  tiny  fraction  of  a  modern  nation.  A  modern  civ- 
ilized man  can,  therefore,  never  see  or  hear  the  nation  of 
which  he  is  a  member,  and,  if  he  thinks  or  feels  about  it, 
he  must  do  so  by  employing  some  acquired  entity  of  the 

78 


THE  NATION  AS  IDEA  AND  FACT 

mind.  I  found,  the  other  day,  in  a  bundle  of  twenty-year- 
old  notes,  that  I  had  written  the  words  "painted  box,"  to 
express  my  belief  that  each  of  us  walks  through  life  with 
his  head  locked  within  a  lighted  box  painted  with  the 
picture  of  the  world  by  which  he  guides  his  steps.  My 
metaphor,  however,  ignored  the  fact  that  our  direct  sen- 
sations form  at  any  moment  at  least  the  foreground  of 
that  mental  picture.  It  would  have  been  better  if  I  had 
referred  to  the  panorama  of  the  Battle  of  Waterloo, 
which,  as  a  child  in  pre-cinema  days,  I  saw  at  a  country 
fair,  with  its  foreground  of  solid  ears  of  corn,  solid  field- 
gun,  and  solid  wax  model  of  a  dead  soldier,  fading  into  a 
background  of  painted  canvas.  So,  when  we  think  of  our 
nation,  the  people  and  houses  and  newspaper  pages  that 
are,  as  we  think,  within  the  range  of  our  senses,  fade  into 
a  background  which  the  experiences  of  every  year  since 
first  we  heard  our  nation  named  have  helped  to  paint. 
And  when  we  vote  or  write  a  letter  or  telegraph  an  order 
or  cooperate  in  any  other  way  in  nation-wide  action, 
we  are  often  like  an  excited  rustic  at  the  fair  who  should 
fire  a  gun  at  the  painted  French  army  on  the  panorama- 
canvas  and  kill  a  real  market  woman  across  the  square. 

But  the  metaphor  of  the  panorama  is  itself  imperfect, 
in  that  it  ignores  the  fact  that  the  picture  before  us 
changes  with  every  moment  of  our  thought,  and  that 
though  the  first  image  presents  itself  automatically,  its 
subsequent  changes  can  be  consciously  directed  by  an 
effort  of  our  will.  If,  as  we  sit  in  a  psychological  labora- 
tory, the  name  of  our  country  is  suddenly  exposed  on  the 
screen,  a  visual  or  audile  image — a  map  or  flag  or  bit  of 
landscape  or  the  sound  of  a  word — will  automatically 
appear  to  us,  and  will  probably  be  accompanied  almost 

79 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

simultaneously  by  some  emotion  or  impulse.  If  we  con- 
centrate our  attention  on  that  image,  it  will  rapidly  de- 
velop into  the  long  series  of  associated  "facts"  which  con- 
stitutes our  "knowledge"  of  our  country;  and  over  that 
development  our  will  has  much  controlling  power.  Our 
accompanying  emotional  and  impulsive  reactions  will  also 
develop  into  a  complex  of  feelings,  due  partly  to  the  val- 
uation and  interpretation  of  our  idea  by  our  primitive  in- 
stincts, and  partly  to  acquired  associations  of  emotion 
with  emotion.  Over  that  emotional  complex  our  will  has 
less  controlling  power.  Our  will,  at  the  moment,  has  no 
controlling  power  over  the  automatic  images  and  impulses 
which  first  reveal  themselves  when  the  printed  card  drops 
from  the  machine;  but  they,  again,  are  the  result  of  causes 
many  of  which  might  have  been  influenced  by  our  will  in 
the  past,  and  may  be  influenced  by  our  will  in  the  future. 
Of  all  this  we  are  in  our  daily  life  only  occasionally  and 
intermittently  conscious.  We  are  sometimes  vividly  con- 
scious of  a  sensation  which  starts  in  us  the  image  or 
"idea"  of  our  nation.  Sometimes  we  are  vividly  conscious 
of  the  idea  of  our  nation,  and  less  conscious  of  the  sensa- 
tion which  started  it.  Sometimes  we  are  vividly  conscious 
of  an  emotion  or  impulse  arising  out  of  our  idea  of  our 
nation,  and  less  conscious  of  the  idea  itself,  or  of  the  sen- 
sation which  started  it.  When,  for  instance,  on  August 
5,  1914, 1  stood  vaguely  watching  the  incidents  of  mobili- 
zation outside  the  Admiralty  and  the  War  Office  in  White- 
hall, I  was  vividly  conscious  of  a  feeling  of  gathering 
power,  which  was  the  result  of  a  strong  stimulation  of  my 
"instinct  of  corporate  defense."  My  feeling  was  in  fact 
preceded  by  the  sight  of  a  few  soldiers  and  sailors,  and 
accompanied  by  the  idea  of  a  mobilizing  nation.  But  I 

80 


THE  NATION  AS  IDEA  AND  FACT 

was  conscious  rather  of  my  feeling  than  of  my  idea  or  my 
visual  sensation. 

Because  we  are  not  trained  to  be  aware  of  the  charac- 
ter of  this  process,  most  of  us  tend  to  assume  that  there 
exists  an  objective  reality  corresponding  exactly  to  those 
of  our  ideas  which  are  accompanied  by  strong  feelings. 
I  can  see  in  a  walk  along  Whitehall  a  Labor  M.  P.,  an 
officer  of  the  Guards,  and  a  High  Church  Bishop.  The 
sight  of  the  long  row  of  Government  Departments  with 
the  Houses  of  Parliament  at  the  end  starts  in  each  of  them 
a  half -conscious  idea,  which,  if  he  were  questioned,  he 
might  call  "The  People,"  or  "My  King  and  Country,"  or 
"Christian  England."  That  idea  is  accompanied  by  feel- 
ings of  pride  and  affection  and  corporate  power;  and 
these  feelings  are  so  vivid  that  each  man  is  prepared  to 
vote  or  fight  or  agitate,  on  the  subconscious  and  unex- 
amined  assumption  that  his  idea,  which  may  be  little  more 
than  a  faint  memory  of  a  hundred  leading  articles  in  the 
Daily  Herald  or  Morning  Post  or  Church  Times,  is  a 
trustworthy  equivalent  for  the  real  England  which  his 
action  will  affect. 

But  while  men  are  normally  unaware  of  the  process  by 
which  their  idea  of  their  nation  and  its  accompanying 
emotions  are  produced,  the  practised  skill  of  those  whose 
business  is  the  large-scale  creation  of  such  ideas  and  emo- 
tions is  constantly  increasing.  The  controllers  of  news- 
papers, especially  of  the  sinister  American  or  British 
journals  whose  writers  are  apparently  encouraged  to 
"color  the  news"  (as  well  as  their  comments  on  the  news), 
in  accordance  with  the  will  of  a  multimillionaire  proprie- 
tor, know  pretty  exactly  what  they  are  doing.  The  manu- 
facturers of  cinema  films,  though  their  own  object  may 

81 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

be  nothing  but  the  accumulation  of  money,  are  creating 
for  the  now  growing  generation  of  mankind  an  imaged 
world  in  which,  against  a  background  of  Calif ornian  val- 
leys and  Chicago  drawing-rooms,  second-rate  actors  prove 
that  luck  and  coincidence  will  always  help  vulgar  motives 
to  vulgar  success.  The  Ministers  of  propaganda  and  of 
education  in  any  one  of  the  new  aggressive  nations  which 
have  been  created  by  the  war  are  apparently  determined 
to  leave  nothing  to  accident  in  the  slow  and  subconscious 
process  by  which  their  subjects  and  their  neighbors  form 
ideas  of  that  nation.  It  is  perhaps  fortunate  that,  owing 
to  certain  subtle  acts  in  our  psychology,  their  deliberately 
created  entities  do  not  often  stir  us,  even  in  their  most 
strident  forms,  as  deeply  as  our  direct  sensations  of  con- 
crete facts.  No  newspaper  articles  or  posters  during  the 
war  moved  us  in  London  quite  in  the  same  way  as  did  the 
low  thudding  of  the  Messines  guns,  or  the  sight  of  a  Zep- 
pelin crossing  the  beam  of  a  searchlight.  But  the  fact 
that  the  impulses  which  make  us  vote,  or  invest,  or  dog- 
matize on  politics  at  the  club  are  tepid  and  half-hearted, 
does  nothing  to  diminish  the  sharpness  with  which  distant 
but  real  human  beings  are  affected  by  our  decisions.1 

How  then  is  any  of  us  to  acquire  an  idea  of  his  nation 
which,  with  its  emotional  associations,  will  form  a  more 
reliable  guide  for  nation-wide  action  than  does  the  pano- 
rama-background that  the  accidents  of  past  talk  and  read- 
ing and  travel  and  the  ingenuities  of  propagandists  have 
painted  for  him?  Here,  as  in  the  whole  problem  of  our 
relation  to  our  social  heritage,  we  shall,  I  believe,  find  the 
answer,  not  in  a  "return  to  nature,"  but  in  a  more  reso- 

1  On  the  relation  between  such  "ideas"  and  political  action  see  my 
Human  Nature  in  Politics,  Part  I,  Chap.  II. 

82 


THE  NATION  AS  IDEA  AND  FACT 

lute  use  of  artificial  expedients.  The  student  who  is  pre- 
paring himself  to  play  a  part  in  nation-wide  cooperation 
must  begin  with  a  deliberate  effort  of  radical  scepticism. 
Descartes  owed  his  influence  over  modern  thought  to  his 
conscious  determination  to  substitute  for  the  philosophical 
propositions  which  he  had  accepted  on  the  authority  of  his 
teachers,  and  the  unexamined  impulses  which  originated  in 
what  he  called  his  "appetites,"  a  train  of  reasoning  every 
step  in  which  it  should  be  impossible  to  doubt.  The  mod- 
ern student  of  the  social  sciences  must  separate  from  his 
"self"  and  bring  under  a  self-conscious  process  of  recon- 
struction, not  only  his  conscious  philosophy  and  impulses, 
but  that  idea  of  his  nation  which  would  automatically 
appear  if  he  sat  before  a  psychological  screen,  and  which 
forms  the  unconscious  background  of  his  daily  thinking. 
He  must  fight,  for  instance,  against  that  "idol  of  the  cave" 
by  which  the  professional  thinker  is  so  often  misled,  his 
tendency  to  assume  that  all  other  men  when  he  thinks 
about  them  are  very  like  himself  as  he  thinks.  Profes- 
sional thinkers  about  society,  and  the  readers  of  their 
books,  are  unusual  people — engaged  on  an  unusual  task; 
they  have  more  than  an  average  permanent  interest  in 
their  subject,  and  at  the  moment  of  writing  and  reading 
they  are  devoting  their  whole  attention  on  it.  Because 
they  are  engaged  in  the  effort  of  systematic  thought  or  in 
the  gathering  of  knowledge  necessary  for  such  thought, 
and  because  they  are  often  convinced  that  the  main- 
tenance and  future  progress  of  society  depends  on  the 
stimulation  of  thought  in  others,  they  inevitably  tend  to 
"intellectualize"  their  problem,  by  assuming  that  most  of 
the  actions  of  most  men  are  the  result  of  conscious,  de- 
liberate, and  well-informed  reasoning. 

83 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

In  the  last  chapter  I  was  dealing  with  instances  in 
which  this  "intellectualist"  conception  has  a  certain  cor- 
respondence with  the  facts.  The  statesmen  and  generals 
and  officials  who  made  up  the  groups  which  I  discussed 
were  men  carefully  selected  and  trained,  at  the  best  age 
for  intellectual  work,  and  spending  their  whole  working- 
days  in  the  effort  to  attain  practical  ends  by  the  solution 
of  intellectual  problems.  The  majority,  however,  of  the 
members  of  a  modern  nation  are  ordinary  people,  who,  at 
any  given  moment,  are  either  not  concentrating  their  at- 
tention at  all,  or  are  concentrating  it  on  some  personal 
short-range  purpose.  The  student,  therefore,  who  is  at- 
tempting slowly  to  create  for  himself  a  trustworthy  idea 
of  his  nation,  should  attempt  to  see  his  fellow-nationals, 
not,  primarily,  from  the  inside  as  minds,  but  from  the  out- 
side as  moving  bodies.  To  do  so  he  should  make  as  vivid 
and  permanent  a  mental  picture  as  he  can  of  members  of 
his  nation  so  chosen  as  to  be  fairly  typical  of  the  mass,  but 
not  so  numerous  as  to  leave  in  his  memory  a  confused 
crowd.  If  the  nation  which  he  is  considering  is,  like  Brit- 
ain, mainly  urban,  he  will  be  wise  to  watch  closely  for  ten 
minutes  a  week,  or  at  least  imagine  for  two  minutes  a 
week  that  he  is  watching,  the  people  whom  he  can  pass  in 
an  ordinary  street  or  see  on  a  cinematograph  film  repre- 
senting, not  a  group  of  denaturalized  cinema-actors,  but 
the  spectators  at  some  public  event  who  do  not  know  that 
they  are  being  photographed.  Perhaps  he  is  himself  walk- 
ing along  the  pavement  of  one  of  these  dreary  working- 
class  streets  which  lie  between  central  London  and  its 
outer  suburbs.  Let  him  fix  in  his  memory  a  "moving 
picture"  of  what  he  sees,  seeing  himself  if  he  can,  not  as 

84 


THE  NATION  AS  IDEA  AND  FACT 

an  observing  philosopher,  but  as  a  worried  householder  or 
casual  holiday-maker  passing  with  the  rest. 

His  picture  will  be  more  fertile  in  starting  new 
thoughts,  if,  while  he  is  forming  it,  he  maintains  a  con- 
scious "problem-attitude,"  and  encourages  his  emotions 
as  well  as  his  imagination  to  play  about  his  problem.  He 
should  ask  himself,  for  instance,  as  he  watches,  what  is 
the  relation  between  the  people  whom  he  sees  in  the  Lon- 
don street  and  the  social  organization  which  makes  it  pos- 
sible for  them  and  seven  million  others  to  remain  alive  in 
the  London  area.  How  far  is  it  true  that,  as  an  American 
friend  said  to  me,  the  social  "cement"  which  has  so  far 
held  western  civilization  together  is  crumbling  away? 
The  daily  food  of  these  people,  and  the  materials  of  their 
daily  work,  are  brought  to  London  by  a  huge  and  precari- 
ous system  of  railways  and  steamships:  their  health  is 
dependent  on  a  complex  arrangement  of  sewers,  and  water 
mains,  and  isolation  hospitals,  and  factory  inspection: 
the  businesses  which  employ  them  are  largely  financed  by 
a  few  great  banks:  the  children  are  being  educated, 
and  the  parents  have  nearly  all  been  educated,  in  state- 
controlled  schools:  the  personal  security  of  them  all  de- 
pends on  an  elaborate  state  organization  of  justice  and 
police.  But  a  month  hence  the  treasury-note  in  the  hand 
of  the  woman  across  the  street  who  is  buying  potatoes 
may  be  worth  no  more  than  a  rouble-note  in  Petrograd 
or  a  krone  in  Vienna;  the  crippled  soldier  may  find  that 
he  cannot  draw  his  pension,  and  the  grey-haired  cabinet- 
maker may  be  out  of  work.  Even  if  no  disaster  befalls 
the  central  finance  of  the  nation,  a  municipal  election  next 
month,  or  a  vote  at  a  committee  this  afternoon,  may  de- 
cide whether  the  boy  who  is  turning  over  the  "twopenny 

85 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

box"  of  the  bookstall  shall  get  a  scholarship  or  become  a 
carman's  drudge;  and  a  revolutionary  railway  strike  may 
at  any  moment  set  the  policeman  and  the  railway  porter 
who  are  chatting  at  the  street  corner  to  hating  and  per- 
haps fighting  each  other.  When  he  passes  from  this  ex- 
ternal motion-picture  to  the  formation  of  an  idea  of  the 
internal  thoughts  and  feelings  of  his  fellow-nationals  the 
student  will  find  his  task  much  more  difficult.  But  the 
patient  watching  for  little  pieces  of  significant  evidence 
will  help  to  prevent  him  from  subconsciously  assuming 
that  the  "panorama"  which  he  sees,  however  close  it  may 
be  to  the  world  of  objective  fact,  is  the  same  as  that  which 
they  see. 

So  far  he  will  have  concentrated  his  attention,  as  did 
the  prisoners  in  Plato's  Cave,  on  the  individual  human 
beings  who  pass  like  shadows  before  him.  But  if  he  is 
watching  Camden  Town  in  London  or  Seventh  Avenue 
in  New  York  with  the  same  intensity  with  which  Plato 
watched  the  morning  crowd  in  the  Athenian  agora,  he  may 
suddenly  realize  how  great  a  sense  of  intellectual  power 
comes  to  him,  as  it  came  to  Plato,  when  he  reminds  him- 
self that  these  individuals,  though  unique,  are  not  unre- 
lated— that  they  do  all  conform  in  varying  degrees  to  the 
human  physical  and  psychological  type.  Few  of  us  now 
believe  with  Plato  that  that  type  exists,  single  and  perfect, 
in  "some  heavenly  place";  but  we  know  enormously 
more  than  did  Plato  of  its  history  and  complexity,  and 
we  can  estimate  better  than  he  could  its  relation  to  the 
moulding  force  of  our  physical  and  intellectual  environ- 
ment, and  the  proportion,  with  regard  to  each  of  its  fac- 
tors, between  the  many  individuals  who  come  near  the 

86 


THE  NATION  AS  IDEA  AND  FACT 

mean,  and  the  few  who  are  at  each  extreme  of  excess  or 
defect. 

At  this  point  the  student  may  begin  to  use  his  idea  of 
his  nation  as  a  means  of  judging  between  different  forms 
of  national  cooperation.  He  will  soon,  I  believe,  convince 
himself  that  no  national  social  organization  can  be  stable 
which  is  not  supported  by  a  larger  measure  of  general  con- 
sent than  is  now  found  in  any  great  modern  industrial 
community.  Before  the  war  many  conservative  thinkers 
advocated  national  organization  on  the  basis  of  mere  dis- 
cipline. Let  each  have  his  own  place  in  the  national  sys- 
tem as  workman,  housewife,  student,  or  administrator; 
let  each  acquire  the  habit  of  performing  his  special  func- 
tion; and  let  that  habit  be  maintained  by  carefully  trained 
policemen  and  soldiers  and  professors.  No  thinker  in  the 
world  except  perhaps  in  Japan,  or  in  the  administration 
of  the  United  States  Steel  Corporation,  or  the  clubs  of 
officials  and  soldiers  in  British  India,  would  to-day  be 
satisfied  with  that  basis.  The  social  organization  of 
Prussia  and  Austria  and  Russia  broke  down,  because,  in 
the  first  place,  the  habituation  of  an  individual  is  not  re- 
produced in  the  biological  inheritance  of  the  race.  The 
individual  human  beings  who  pass  us  in  the  street  have 
on  the  average  only  some  thirty  years  of  life  before  them; 
and  every  day  there  are  born  to  them  new  human  beings 
with  all  the  impulses  and  limitations  of  their  primitive 
ancestors,  in  whom  the  process  of  habituation  must  begin 
afresh.  In  the  next  place,  the  habituation  of  an  indi- 
vidual human  being  is  never  perfect.  At  the  point  when 
training  seems  most  complete,  as,  for  instance,  in  the  Ger- 
man navy  or  the  Essen  workshops  in  1918,  human  nature 

87 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

revolts;2  the  men  become  "fed-up"  and  the  past  discipline 
becomes  a  force  hindering  rather  than  helping  its  original 
purpose.  Habit,  like  the  arch  in  the  Indian  proverb, 
"never  sleeps";  and  any  break  in  social  routine  or  dis- 
organization of  political  institutions  in  a  country  ruled  by 
habit  without  conscious  consent  may  throw  out  of  gear 
the  whole  system  of  subdivided  cooperation  on  which 
modern  civilization,  and  the  existence  of  modern  popula- 
tions, depend. 

Nor  will  the  classical  "economic  motive,"  the  short- 
range  calculation  by  each  employee  that  if  in  any  week 
he  works  harder  his  wages  at  the  end  of  the  week  will  be 
larger,  prove  a  sufficient  substitute  for  some  measure  of 
general  consent.  It  is  easy  to  argue  that  national  produc- 
tivity would  be  greatly  increased  if  working  men,  each 
of  whom  has  been  for  eight  years  at  school,  and  who  are 
associated  in  huge  industrial  units,  would  confine  their 
attention  to  their  individual  "plain  interests,"  and  leave 
"visionary  ideas"  about  the  justice  or  injustice  of  the  or- 
ganization of  their  nation  alone.  But  the  fact  is  that  they 
do  not  and  will  not  so  confine  their  attention,  and  that 
increased  production  on  that  basis  is  a  visionary  hope. 

How,  then,  are  we  to  bring  it  about  that  a  much  larger 
proportion  than  at  present  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  great 
industrial  nations  shall  consciously  consent  to  play  their 
part  in  the  process  of  national  cooperation?  My  first 
answer  would  be  that  we  must  aim  at  a  much  nearer 
approximation  to  economic  and  social  equality  than  now 
exists  in  any  industrial  nation.  The  physiological  argu- 
ments for  greater  equality  are  becoming  every  day  more 
clear.  It  was,  for  instance,  an  astonishing  fact  that  dur- 

2  See  my  Great  Society,  Chap.  V  (on  Habit). 

88 


THE  NATION  AS  IDEA  AND  FACT 

ing  the  two  years  from  November,  1916,  to  November, 
1918,  though  the  quantity  and  quality  of  the  food  con- 
sumed in  London  was  seriously  below  that  of  the  peace- 
ful and  prosperous  years  1912  and  1913,  yet  because  of 
comparative  equality  of  distribution  the  physical  well- 
being  produced  by  that  food  was  greater.3  The  propor- 
tionate reduction  of  London  food-consumption  during  the 
Napoleonic  wars  was  probably  less,  but  because  social 
inequality  increased  during  those  wars  the  physique  of 
the  whole  population  was,  as  far  as  one  can  judge  from 
one's  impressions  of  contemporary  pictures  and  literature, 
seriously  lowered.4  But  if  we  assume  that  organization 
on  a  national  scale  is  necessary,  the  psychological  argu- 
ments for  a  nearer  approximation  to  economic  equality 
are  even  stronger  than  the  physiological  arguments.  At 
certain  moments  in  their  lives  men  have  to  decide  whether 
they  will  strike  or  rebel  or  how  they  will  vote,  under  cir- 
cumstances where  their  action  may  weaken  or  help  to 
break  up  the  national  cooperative  system.  At  such  mo- 
ments they  will  have  an  idea  of  their  own  relation  to  that 
system.  The  feeling  accompanying  that  idea  may  be  any- 
thing from  a  burning  sense  of  resentment,  or  a  grudging 
acquiescence,  to  that  emotion  of  gratitude  for  mutual 

3  The  School  Medical  Officer  of  the  London  County  Council  in  his 
report  for  the  year  1918,  p.  3,  gives  statistics  (based  on  the  examination 
of  more  than  200,000  children)  and  sums  up  by  saying,  "The  story  is 
one  of  which  London  may  be  proud,  for  it  is  one  of  continuous  ameli- 
oration throughout  the  whole  period  of  the  war.    Whether  judged  from 
the  state  of  the  children's  clothing,  from  their  health  as  expressed  by 
their  nutritional  well-being,  or  from  the  conditions  found  as  regards 
cleanliness,  the  result  is  the  same,  practically  steady  improvement  in 
each  particular." 

4  It  would  be  interesting  if  someone  would  collect  such  evidence  as 
exists  on  this  point. 

89 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

service  which  is  sometimes  found  in  a  well-organized  and 
successful  regiment.  But  resentment  will  not  be  absent, 
nor  gratitude  present,  unless  men  and  women  feel  that 
they  are  getting  their  fair  share  of  the  national  product; 
and  they  will  not  permanently  so  feel  unless  in  fact  the 
joint  product  is  distributed  with  a  nearer  approach  to 
equality  than  industrial  civilization  has  yet  achieved.  Ex- 
pedients (including  various  forms  of  taxation  and  con- 
trol) have  already  been  invented  which  aim  at  bringing 
about  an  approximation  to  economic  equality  in  advanced 
industrial  societies.  I  do  not  purpose  here  to  discuss  these 
expedients  in  detail,  but  will  say  that  I  believe  that,  with 
a  certain  amount  of  patience  and  good-will,  these  expedi- 
ents, and  others  which  might  be  invented,  could  be  made 
to  carry  out  their  aim  without  loss,  or  without  loss  which 
was  not  worth  while,  in  national  wealth-production. 

An  approach  to  social  equality  will  not,  however,  pro- 
duce social  contentment,  unless  it  is  accompanied  by  two 
other  conditions:  firstly,  a  better  understanding  of  the 
nature  of  the  social  cooperation  created  by  "money-econ- 
omy"; and  secondly,  a  greater  positive  liking  by  men  and 
women  for  the  work  they  do.  Money-economy  still  gives 
rise,  both  among  those  who  gain  and  those  who  lose  by 
the  present  system  of  distribution,  to  fallacies  which  re- 
mind one  of  the  intellectual  atmosphere  of  the  stone  ages. 
Our  ancestors  early  discovered  the  advantage  of  giving 
each  member  of  a  tribe  a  name;  but,  at  a  period  suffi- 
ciently near  our  own  time  to  make  it  unlikely  that  im- 
portant changes  in  our  biological  inheritance  have  since 
occurred,  men  still  assumed  that  a  man's  name  was  some- 
thing which,  like  the  man  himself,  could  be  sold  or  cap- 
tured or  bewitched.  So,  at  a  later  date,  men  discovered 

90 


THE  NATION  AS  IDEA  AND  FACT 

the  advantage  of  naming  wealth  in  terms  of  money,  and 
we  are  only  now  beginning  to  abandon  some  of  the  cruder 
forms  of  thought  resulting  from  that  discovery.  I  thought 
of  The  Golden  Bough,  and  of  Messrs.  Spencer  and  Gillen 
and  their  friends  the  Aruntas  when  I  read  a  speech  as- 
cribed to  Miss  Morgan  and  quoted  by  Professor  Veblen. 
"  Society  and  its  ramifications  depend  upon  the  expendi- 
ture of  money  for  their  existence.  We  have  the  necessary 
money  to  spend  upon  entertainments  and  the  social  func- 
tions that  annually  give  employment  to  thousands  of 
tradesmen.  .  .  .  Business  is  kept  alive  by  the  thousands 
of  dollars  that  are  spent  by  'high  society.'  "5  In  Britain 
we  do  not  hear  arguments  about  "the  circulation  of 
money"  used  so  confidently  as  they  were  forty  years  ago; 
and  the  fallacies  arising  from  a  confusion  between  the 
money-valuation  of  wealth  and  wealth  have  been  made 
to  seem  less  real  to  us  by  the  object  lessons  of  the  war, 
and  by  a  partial  infiltration  of  modern  professional  eco- 
nomic terms  into  current  speech.  In  December,  1915,  for 
instance,  the  Mayor  of  Cambridge  issued  an  appeal  drawn 
up  by  a  committee  containing  two  of  the  best-known 
Cambridge  economists.  In  it  the  public  were  told  that 
"the  only  true  saving  at  the  present  time  consists  in  reduc- 
ing our  demands  for  goods  and  services"  (Times,  Decem- 
ber 20,  1915).  Twelve  months  later,  the  National  War 
Savings  Committee  published  a  nation-wide  appeal  to 
women  to  "demand  fewer  services"  (Times,  December 
13,  1916),  and  Sir  Auckland  Geddes  in  1917  urged  us  "so 
to  order  our  lives  that  we  may  make  the  least  possible 
demand  upon  the  energy  of  others"  (November  12, 
1917).  I  inferred  that  "F.  W.  H."  must  have  been  a  very 

6  Veblen,  Imperial  Germany,  p.  140. 

91 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

great  lady  indeed  to  have  secured  insertion  in  the  Times 
(April  19,  1916)  for  a  letter  advocating  "a  plan  to  help 
the  country,"  which  "can  be  done  with  very  little  effort 
and  self-denial.  Our  nine  household  servants  have  agreed 
to  give  up  meat  of  any  sort  for  their  breakfast,  and  the 
money  thus  saved  is  ...  invested  in  War  Loan."  And 
the  realist  examination  of  the  mining  industry  as  a  social 
process  by  the  Coal  Commission  of  1919  made  a  begin- 
ning of  the  protection  of  the  average  coal-miner  and  coal- 
owner  from  the  same  type  of  thought. 

The  second  condition,  a  greater  zest  (or  a  lessened  dis- 
like) in  individual  men  and  women  for  their  work,  is  even 
more  important.  Ricardo  and  the  "classical"  political 
economists  tended  to  assume  that  all  productive  work 
must  be  disagreeable,  and  that  no  work  would  ever  be 
undertaken  except  in  order  to  secure  the  secondary  pleas- 
ures resulting  from  wages,  and  to  avoid  the  secondary 
evils  arising  from  poverty.  If  that  were  true,  the  elabo- 
rate cooperative  system  of  modern  industry  would  be 
more  unstable  than  it  now  is.  If,  at  the  Judgment  of 
Solomon,  neither  mother  had  desired  the  baby  to  live,  ex- 
cept from  indirect  and  secondary  motives,  the  baby  would 
certainly  have  been  cut  in  two.  Already  some  men  and 
women  for  all  the  working-day,  and  many  for  part  of  it, 
are,  if  they  believe  themselves  to  be  fairly  well  treated  by 
the  community,  carried  through  their  work  by  a  positive 
impulse  arising  directly  from  the  work  itself;  a  born  lover 
of  flowers  with  a  liking  for  children  tends  the  flower  beds 
in  a  public  park;  a  born  politician  edits  a  local  paper;  a 
born  wood-carver  gives  twenty  years'  work  to  a  new 
cathedral.  Sometimes  a  man's  paid  working  hours  are 
consciously  divided  between  those  in  which  he  feels  him- 

92 


THE  NATION  AS  IDEA  AND  FACT 

self  to  be  working  for  the  work's  sake  and  those  in  which 
he  is  working  for  the  wage;  a  rather  selfish  and  ambitious 
man  with  an  abnormal  passion  of  scientific  curiosity  is 
offered  satisfaction  for  his  intellectual  cravings  if  he  will 
make,  in  an  astronomical  observatory,  calculations  which 
will  lead  to  the  improvement  of  navigation;  or  a  man  with 
unusual  natural  sensitiveness  to  beauty  is  made  a  Profes- 
sor of  Fine  Art,  and  is  allowed  to  spend  his  mornings  in 
looking  at  seventeenth-century  etchings,  on  condition 
that  he  overcomes  his  dislike  for  lecturing  about  them 
in  the  afternoon.  More  often  men  make  no  such  con- 
scious distinctions;  a  Medical  Officer  of  Health  who  is 
exactly  the  right  man  for  his  post  only  realizes  at  long 
intervals  that  in  spite  of  occasional  fatigue  and  disap- 
pointment he  has  much  more  zest  in  his  work  than  has  his 
colleague  whose  only  real  interest  in  life  is  politics,  or  the 
stock  exchange,  or  water-color  sketching. 

But  these  cases  now  depend  largely  upon  individual  ac- 
cident; and  the  enjoyment  of  modern  work  can  only  be 
seriously  increased  by  a  wide-spread  and  conscious  policy. 
Part  of  that  policy  (as  I  have  indicated  in  Chapter  II) 
would  consist  of  a  better  adaptation  of  working  methods 
to  the  general  human  type;6  but  an  even  more  important 
part  would  consist  of  a  better  adjustment  of  individual 
tasks  to  individual  differences  between  human  beings.  In 
any  million  of  members  of  a  modern  industrial  nation  it  is 
not  likely  that  more  than  one  of  the  twenty  who  are  best 
fitted  to  be  inventors,  or  writers,  or  organizers,  or  explor- 
ers, or  artisans,  receives  the  necessary  training  and  oppor- 
tunity. An  almost  unimaginable  increase  of  personal  hap- 
piness, social  contentment,  and  economic  efficiency, 

«  See  also  my  Great  Society,  Chap.  XIII. 

93 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

would,  therefore,  result  if  the  achievement  of  a  more  com- 
plete adjustment  became  the  conscious  organized  and 
effective  purpose  of  modern  civilization.  Such  a  purpose 
was  proclaimed  by  the  socialists  of  1848  with  their  motto 
"From  each  according  to  his  powers;  to  each  according  to 
his  needs";  but  the  phalansteres  of  Fourier  and  Con- 
siderant,  or  the  self-governing  productive  associations  of 
Louis  Blanc  and  Marx  and  Lassalle  were  contrivances 
wholly  inadequate  for  their  purpose,  and  their  failure  dis- 
credited any  policy  of  bringing  about  adjustment  between 
the  individual  and  his  social  function  by  any  other  means 
than  the  blind  competition  of  an  individualist  society.  If 
we  are  to  succeed  where  they  failed,  we  must  both  under- 
stand better  than  they  did  the  character  of  the  adjustment 
which  we  desire,  and  be  more  ingenious  than  they  were 
in  inventing  expedients  for  bringing  it  about. 

The  qualities  of  any  individual  at  any  given  moment 
result  from  his  "nurture"  as  well  as  his  "nature";  so  that 
what  we  need  is  an  adjustment  between  three  factors — his 
nature  at  birth,  his  past  training,  and  his  present  way  of 
living.  As  I  write  Lenin  and  Trotsky  are  attempting  to 
make  such  an  adjustment  by  wholly  ignoring  the  past, 
and  are  doing  so  at  the  cost  of  destroying  the  wealth,  the 
organization,  the  traditions,  and  to  an  appalling  extent 
the  lives  of  the  trained  functionaries  of  the  old  dispensa- 
tion. In  Britain  America  and  France  it  is  still  possible 
to  hope  that,  if  time  is  allowed  us,  we  may  make  an  ap- 
proach towards  a  more  complete  adjustment  at  an  infi- 
nitely less  cost  of  suffering  and  waste.  If  we  are  to  do  so, 
we  must  begin  by  a  searching  analysis  of  our  present  edu- 
cational system,  since  it  is  to  that  imperfect  system  that 
we  now  mainly  trust  for  the  discovery  of  the  individual 

94 


THE  NATION  AS  IDEA  AND  FACT 

nature  of  each  of  our  future  citizens,  the  adjustment  of 
his  training  to  that  nature,  and  his  introduction  to  an 
adult  vocation.  We  must,  therefore,  ask  ourselves 
whether  we  desire  that  our  educational  system  should  be 
based  on,  and  should  itself  create,  a  general  idea  of  our 
nation  as  consisting  of  identical  human  beings,  or  of  dif- 
ferent human  beings.  Our  answer  to  that  question  will 
affect,  not  only  the  degree  of  specialization  which  we  shall 
deem  it  wise  to  introduce  into  the  schools,  but  much  in 
our  general  pedagogic  methods.  I  myself  believe  that  we 
ought  to  decide  for  an  education  based  on  the  conscious 
idea  of  difference,  and  should  direct  our  pedagogic 
methods  by  that  decision.  Every  child,  for  instance,  now 
learns  arithmetic.  In  most  elementary  schools,  he  is 
taught  as  an  "infant"  what  is  called  "concrete  arith- 
metic": he  is  shown  collections  of  balls  or  coins  or  sticks 
or  cubes,  any  one  of  which  is  indistinguishable  from  the 
others,  and  is  trained  to  make  calculations  about  imagi- 
nary apples,  or  eggs,  on  the  same  assumption  of  their  iden- 
tity with  each  other.  Number  is  apt,  indeed,  at  this  stage 
to  seem  to  him  a  special  quality  possessed  by  such  collec- 
tions of  identical  things.  He  is  next  introduced  to  "ab- 
stract" arithmetic,  and  makes  the  same  assumption  of  the 
identity  of  the  units,  when  he  multiplies  the  abstract 
number  ten  by  the  abstract  number  four,  or  when  he  cal- 
culates the  relation  between  nine  inches  and  twenty  miles. 
I  believe  that  it  would  be  wise  from  the  beginning  to  make 
a  small  child  count  and  measure  and  weigh  not  only  identi- 
cal things  but  also  boxes  full  of  such  differing  miscellanies 
as  Mr.  Kipling's  Kim  was  trained  to  observe.  Some  years 
later  he  could  be  taught  to  deal  with  that  special  case 
which  will  be  of  such  supreme  importance  to  him  as  a 

95 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

member  of  an  animal  species  who  has  to  live  by  cooperat- 
ing with  his  fellows,  and  by  consuming  the  tissues  of  other 
animal  and  vegetable  species.  He  could,  that  is  to  say, 
learn  to  handle  the  quantitative  relation  which  the  manu- 
facturers of  boots  or  gloves  call  an  "assortment,"  i.e.,  a 
small  number  of  certain  exceptional  "sizes"  and  "fittings" 
shading  into  larger  numbers  of  the  "sizes"  and  "fittings" 
near  the  mean.  He  could  construct  experimentally  the 
normal  "curve  of  error"  by  counting,  e.g.,  the  number  of 
short  or  long  "runs"  of  black  or  white  balls  drawn  out  of 
a  box,  and  compare  it  with  the  biological  curve  plotted 
from  the  measurement  of  leaves  picked  casually  from  a 
bush.  Later  on,  he  could  compare  the  curve  of  error 
with  the  more  complex  Mendelian  variations  in  the  seeds 
of  experimentally  cross-bred  sweet  peas. 

The  first  critical  point  would  come,  when  the  teacher 
had  to  decide  whether  his  pupils  should  be  made  con- 
scious that  they  themselves  formed  part  of  such  a  biologi- 
cal assortment,  that  the  pupils  of  each  school  year  could 
themselves  be  plotted  along  such  curves  in  respect  of 
height,  weight,  eyesight,  memory,  ear  for  music,  etc.,  etc., 
and  that  there  were  definite  limits  within  which,  and  only 
within  which,  each  child  might  expect  to  change  his  own 
position  on  each  curve  by  self-conscious  will.  In  this  mat- 
ter we  are  at  present  in  a  curious  state  of  ethical  confu- 
sion. In  order  to  encourage  industry  and  energy  boys 
and  girls  are  graded  by  periodical  competitive  examina- 
tions and  competitive  games;  and  each  individual  makes 
a  rough  guess  as  to  the  point  at  which  it  is  worth  while 
for  him  to  aim  in  each  competition.  But  the  underlying 
natural  and  nurtural  curve  is  a  sort  of  guilty  secret;  the 
local  grandee  who  presides  at  the  annual  prize-giving 

96 


THE  NATION  AS  IDEA  AND  FACT 

hints  shamefacedly  at  the  fact  that  Jones  minor's  success 
in  mathematics  or  music,  and  Smith  major's  failure,  are 
not  entirely  due  to  moral  differences;  and  an  hour  later 
Jones  minor  vaguely  envies  Brown  tertius,  who  makes 
fifty  runs  and  three  catches  in  the  slips  because  he  can  see 
a  cricket  ball  moving  at  a  pace  which  would  make  it  in- 
visible to  an  average  boy.  Other  factors  are  less  clearly 
realized;  the  scholarship-boy  whose  mother  brought  up  a 
family  on  thirty  shillings  a  week,  knows  with  a  dull  pain 
that,  because  his  nurture  has  not  harmonized  with  his  na- 
ture, he  will  never  be  equal  to  industrious  boys  from  well- 
to-do  homes  of  much  less  than  his  own  natural  ability. 
Little  Myer  Abraham,  the  head-boy,  may  be  clever 
enough  to  guess  that  six  years  hence  an  overgrown  Scotch 
lad  in  the  lower  fifth  may  have  developed  beyond  him. 
A  sister  who  at  sixteen  teaches  her  brother  Jiis  lessons  may 
fear  that  at  twenty-one  he  will  be  teaching  her. 

The  next  critical  point  would  be  the  degree  to  which 
children  of  different  qualities  should  be  given  different 
courses  or  sent  to  different  schools.  Already  at  school 
there  lies  behind  the  haphazard  consciousness  of  differ- 
ence the  subconscious  malaise  which  comes  from  the  want 
of  actual  adjustment  between  the  school  curriculum  and 
the  powers  and  impulses  of  the  individual  student;  the 
young  scientist  who  is  kept  to  the  study  of  literature,  the 
young  poet  who  is  kept  to  science,  the  young  craftsman 
who  cannot  learn  from  books,  is  often  not  aware  of  the 
reason  why  he  is  sulky,  and  disobedient,  and  perhaps  im- 
moral. Meanwhile  the  chief  official  of  the  local  education 
committee,  or  the  newly-elected  Labor  Party  chairman, 
may  be  sitting  before  a  set  of  official  curves  showing  the 
results  of  unprepared  Binet  psychological  tests  coordi- 

97 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

nated  with  terminal  examination  results  and  the  reports  of 
the  class  teachers.  He  asks  himself:  Shall  he,  in  order  to 
strengthen  the  idea  and  fact  of  social  equality,  treat  all 
children  as  near  as  may  be  alike?  or  shall  he,  in  order  to 
make  more  exact  the  adjustment  between  the  individual 
and  his  function,  base  his  treatment  of  them  mainly  on 
their  differences?  No  perfectly  simple  answer  to  this 
question  will  be  possible  until  our  powers  of  psychological 
testing  are  increased,  and  until  social  equality  has  suffi- 
ciently advanced  to  make  the  differences  at  any  moment 
between  children  depend  much  more  than  they  do  at  pres- 
ent upon  "nature,"  and  much  less  on  the  "nurture"  of  rich 
and  poor,  or  of  educated  and  uneducated  homes.  But, 
broadly  speaking,  I  am  convinced  that  social  progress  al- 
ready lies  on  the  line  of  recognized  difference.  On  this 
point,  when  I  was  last  in  the  United  States,  Professor 
Dallas  Lore  Sharp  started  an  extremely  interesting  and 
significant  controversy  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly  (Novem- 
ber, 1919).  Professor  Sharp  argued  for  the  conception  of 
identity  as  the  main  basis  of  education.  "The  true  end 
of  American  education  is  the  knowledge  and  practice  of 
democracy — whatever  other  personal  ends  our  education 
may  serve.  .  .  .  We  must  all  go  together  to  school,  with 
a  common  language,  a  common  course  of  study,  a  com- 
mon purpose,  faith,  and  enthusiasm  for  democracy."  He 
recognized  the  need  of  special  courses  and  even  special 
schools  for  the  mentally  deficient;  but  for  him  the  species 
is  divided  into  the  deficient  and  the  normal,  and  all  the 
"normal"  are  apparently  treated  in  his  thinking  as  identi- 
cal with  each  other.  For  the  normal  he  proposes  "one 
common  school  only,  for  rich  and  poor,  up  to  the  end  of 
the  high  school  [i.e.,  sixteen  years  of  age] ;  by  which  time 

98 


THE  NATION  AS  IDEA  AND  FACT 

we  are  pretty  well  all  we  need  to  be  for  purposes  of  democ- 
racy." In  this  common  school  there  shall  be  "one  com- 
mon course,  one  broad  universal  course,  thus  educating 
for  democracy  first  and  after  that  for  life  and  living," 
though  apparently  children  of  exceptional  ability  are  to 
be  allowed  to  pass  through  that  course  with  exceptional 
rapidity.  "A  special  programme  of  training,  vocational, 
business,  or  college,  before  the  end  of  the  high  school,  if 
not  contrary  to  the  Decalogue  is  contrary  to  the  spirit  of 
the  Constitution,  and  a  menace  to  democracy.  .  .  .  As  a 
nation  we  understand  the  theory  of  democracy.  .  .  .  We 
can  die  for  democracy.  Yet  we  cannot  go  to  school  for 
it,  we  cannot  be  democratic."  I  was  told  that  Professor 
Sharp's  plea  was  supported  by  an  extraordinary  number 
of  enthusiastic  letters  to  the  editor  of  the  Atlantic. 

I  sympathize  intensely  with  those  American  thinkers 
who  fear  the  development  of  hereditary  social  stratifica- 
tion in  America.  And  yet  I  am  sure  that  if  the  political 
organization  of  America  is  to  show  itself  compatible  with 
the  insistent  demands  of  modern  civilization  it  must  be 
based  on  a  theory  of  democracy  more  complex  than  that 
of  identity,  and  nearer  to  the  formula  of  1848,  "From 
each  according  to  his  powers;  to  each  according  to  his 
needs."  In  a  democracy  so  based  the  child  who  is  called 
by  the  community  to  the  heavy  task  of  consciously  train- 
ing his  exceptional  intellectual  or  artistic  talent  would  be 
much  more  likely  to  do  full  service  as  a  man,  and  much 
less  likely  to  become  either  a  prig  or  a  snob,  than  is  the 
bewildered  little  "smug"  who  wins  school  prizes  to-day. 

In  England,  the  idea  of  democracy  as  identity — the 
idea  of  Thomas  Jefferson  and  Andrew  Jackson — is  far  less 
powerful  than  in  America,  and  in  a  population  almost 

99 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

wholly  occupied  in  commerce  and  manufacture  is  more 
obviously  inconsistent  with  social  fact  than  it  is  in  a  popu- 
lation more  than  half  of  which  is  agricultural.  We  are 
rapidly  creating  special  schools  for  children  of  various 
types  of  mental  and  physical  defect,  and  all  educational 
authorities  provide  scholarships  and  bursaries  for  chil- 
dren of  special  ability.  The  head  teachers  of  English  city 
schools  spend  a  large  part  of  their  time  in  recommending 
children  for  various  kinds  of  employment,  and  vocational 
education,  based  on  the  assumption  that  every  student 
should  receive  an  education  leading  to  the  vocation  for 
which  he  or  she  is  most  fitted  by  nature,  is  steadily  gain- 
ing, as  far  as  the  years  from  fourteen  to  twenty-two  are 
concerned,  upon  "general  education."  But  this  tendency 
has  not  yet  acquired  the  stability  which  would  be  ensured 
by  the  general  acceptance  of  a  clear  principle;  much  con- 
servative opinion  in  England  still  supports  those  tradi- 
tions of  the  endowed  public  schools  and  universities  which 
are  based  mainly  on  differentiation  by  hereditary  class; 
and  much  radical  opinion  still  inclines  towards  the  prin- 
ciple of  ignoring  as  far  as  possible  all  differences  whether 
of  nurture  or  nature.  Our  official  educational  policy  fol- 
lows, however,  as  a  rule,  what  I  believe  to  be  a  better 
principle.  It  looks  to  the  general  progress  of  democratic 
administration  to  produce  such  a  measure  of  social  equal- 
ity as  to  secure  that  the  differences  between  school-chil- 
dren shall  in  the  future  be  due  rather  to  their  nature  than 
to  their  nurture.  Meanwhile  it  adjusts  its  educational 
system  to  individual  differences,  partly  by  testing  the 
child  as  nature  and  nurture  together  have  made  him, 
partly  (as  when  a  scholarship  scheme  favors  "ability" 
rather  than  "knowledge")  by  giving  a  preference  to  na- 

100 


THE  NATION  AS  IDEA  AND  FACT 

ture  over  nurture;  and  it  hopes  that  in  a  community  edu- 
cated on  that  principle  the  conception  of  mutual  though 
differing  service  may  ultimately  prove  itself  stronger  than 
class  selfishness  and  class  hatred,  or  the  natural  yearning 
for  simple  ideas  of  complex  facts. 


101 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  CONTROL  OF  NATIONAL 
COOPERATION 


IN  the  preceding  chapter  I  argued  that,  since  it  is  now 
necessary  for  us  to  cooperate  on  the  scale  of  a  mod- 
ern industrial  nation,  and  since  that  scale  far  sur- 
passes the  range  of  our  senses,  we  should  consciously  aim 
at  creating  in  our  own  minds  and  in  those  minds  whose 
training  we  influence,  such  an  idea  of  our  nation  as  will 
form  the  most  reliable  stimulus  to  large-scale  cooperative 
emotion  and  cooperative  action.  I  said  that  our  idea 
should  be  based  on  a  direct  observation  of  concrete  hu- 
man beings,  amplified  and  interpreted  by  an  understand- 
ing of  the  relation  of  each  individual  to  the  similarities 
and  variations  of  the  human  type.  An  idea  so  formed 
might,  I  hoped,  lead  on  to  a  conception  of  mutual  service 
which  might  stimulate  the  emotion  of  mutual  grati- 
tude; but  that  conception  and  emotion  would  not  be  per- 
manent unless  we  achieved  in  fact  a  much  nearer  ap- 
proach than  at  present  to  equality  in  the  distribution  of 
wealth,  and  a  more  effective  adjustment  between  the  na- 
ture, nurture,  and  way  of  living  of  the  individual  mem- 
bers of  our  nation. 

102 


THE  CONTROL  OF  NATIONAL  COOPERATION 

There  still  remains  the  problem  which  is  the  subject 
of  this  chapter — by  what  social  machinery  should  the 
members  of  a  modern  industrial  nation  direct  their  large- 
scale  cooperative  activities?  That  problem  is  compli- 
cated by  the  fact  that  sufficient  equality  and  adjustment 
do  not  now  exist,  and  that  it  will  be  no  light  task  to  create 
them  without  wasting  much  that  is  good  in  the  traditions, 
the  accumulated  wealth,  and  even  the  breeding-stock  of 
the  present  generation.  Our  controlling  mechanism  must 
therefore  perform  the  double  function  of  directing  social 
transformation,  and  organizing  social  cooperation.  For 
this  double  function  the  industrial  nations  of  the  world 
adopted  during  the  nineteenth  century  two  main  expedi- 
ents. The  first  was  the  democratic  state,  based  on  the 
convention  of  majority  rule,  and  using  the  machinery 
of  a  "territorial"  franchise,  an  elected  parliament,  and, 
in  the  case  of  America,  an  elected  president.  The  second 
was  joint-stock  capitalism;  those  persons  who  desired  to 
carry  on  any  economic  process  too  large  for  individual 
action  associated  themselves  in  self-governing  corpora- 
tions which  accumulated  capital,  hired  service,  and  di- 
vided gains. 

The  development  of  the  democratic  state  was  found  to 
involve  the  formation  of  great  national  parties,  the  spe- 
cialization and  professionalizing  of  political  work,  and 
the  political  and  economic  influence  of  widely  circulated 
newspapers  controlled  by  ambitious  financiers.  From 
this  has  resulted  a  wide-spread  disgust  with  modern  demo- 
cratic politics.  An  intelligent  workman  during  an  elec- 
tion often  feels  something  of  the  angry  impotence  of  a 
bull  in  a  Spanish  bull-ring.  His  eyes  and  ears  and 
thoughts  are  confused  by  placards  and  newspaper  arti- 

103 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

cles  and  speeches  paid  for  by  men  whom  he  believes  to 
be  calculating  his  impulses  and  tempting  him  to  exhaust 
himself  by  charging  at  shadows.  The  German  Foreign 
Office  official  who  told  Mr.  Curtin  early  in  the  war,  "Pub- 
lic opinion!  .  .  .  Why,  we  create  it!"1  was  preparing  the 
way  for  the  present  weakness  of  German  parliamentarism. 
The  skill  and  psychological  insight  with  which  Mr.  Lloyd 
George's  election  campaign  of  December,  1918,  was  man- 
aged has  left  in  the  minds  of  tens  of  thousands  of  British 
working  men  and  women  a  conviction  that,  as  many  of 
them  now  complain,  they  were  "had,"  and  that  at  the 
next  election  they  will  be  unable  to  prevent  themselves 
from  being  "had"  again. 

On  the  other  hand  the  free  association  of  capitalist 
adventurers  in  joint-stock  companies  was  found  to  lead 
to  hereditary  and  often  idle  ownership  of  wealth  by  an 
investing  class.  Working  men  who  were  dissatisfied  with 
the  national  railway  system  or  mining  system  or  land  sys- 
tem could  not  hope  by  their  weekly  savings  to  buy  out 
the  existing  owners:  their  only  chance  was  to  coerce  or 
dispossess  them.  Up  till  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, most  thoughtful  working  men  had  proposed  to  do 
this  by  using  their  political  power;  and  a  large  part  of 
the  present  working-class  disgust  with  democracy  has 
come  from  the  discovery  that  a  class  of  owners  and  man- 
agers controlling  most  of  the  means  of  publicity,  and 
monopolizing  many  of  the  higher  forms  of  education, 
were  able  to  baffle  any  attempt  to  bring  about  economic 
equality  by  the  use  of  the  vote. 

More  and  more,  therefore,  all  over  the  industrialized 
world  the  "class-conscious"  workmen,  and  those  "intellec- 

1  Curtin,  The  Land  of  Deepening  Shadow  (1917),  p.  83. 

104 


THE  CONTROL  OF  NATIONAL  COOPERATION 

tuals"  and  "professionals"  who  sympathize  with  them  are 
turning  to  some  form  of  "Guild  Socialism"  or  "Sovietism" 
or  "Functional"  or  "Vocational"  society,  as  a  substitute 
both  for  territorial  democracy  and  for  capitalism.  Opposi- 
tion to  this  tendency  is  weakened  by  the  fact  that  the  ex- 
perienced politicians,  who  have  hitherto  formed  the  human 
machinery  of  the  existing  system  of  majority  rule,  are 
often  weary  of  the  nervous  strain,  the  sense  of  unreality, 
the  suspicion  and  ill-will  which  that  system  is  apt  to  cre- 
ate; and  are  themselves  tempted  to  choose  between  mili- 
tary reaction  and  a  vocational  social  system.  In  Britain 
we  have  so  far  had  neither  a  violent  social  revolution  nor 
any  important  attempt  to  bring  one  about.  But  the  tend- 
ency towards  vocational  organization  has  in  certain  essen- 
tial respects  gone  further  in  Britain  than  in  any  other 
nation  with  a  continuous  social  history.  Britain  is  the 
only  great  nation  in  which  the  industrial  and  intellectual 
employees  form  a  clear  majority  over  any  combination 
of  the  agricultural  population  and  the  non-employed  class. 
Therefore  in  Britain,  though  a  class-conscious  Labor 
Party  has  never  formed  a  government,  the  vocational 
tendency  among  manual  and  intellectual  workers  has  ex- 
ercised an  effective  pressure  on  the  policy  of  both  the 
traditional  political  parties.  The  Trade  Unions  and  the 
old  and  new  professional  organizations  include  each  year 
a  larger  proportion  of  the  British  population.  In  1890 
about  20  per  cent  of  the  adult  male  manual  workers  of 
Great  Britain  were  members  of  Trade  Unions,  and  in 
1920,  more  than  60  per  cent.2  In  1920  the  National  Union 
of  Teachers  had  over  102,000  members,  the  Union  of 
Post  Office  Workers  90,000,  and  the  National  Union  of 

2  Webb,  History  of  Trade  Unionism  (Revised  edition,  1920),  p.  472. 

105 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

Clerks  55,ooo.3  Some  of  these  organizations  are,  like  the 
Trade  Unions,  independent  of  the  state,  though  they  pos- 
sess strong  parliamentary  influence,4  receive  many  statu- 
tory rights,  and,  by  the  threat  of  "direct  action,"  con- 
stantly compel  the  government  to  negotiate  with  them. 
Sometimes  they  are  voluntary  organizations  of  state  or 
municipal  officials,  which,  like  the  Postmen's  Union,  and 
the  National  Union  of  Teachers,  are  more  or  less  "recog- 
nized" by  their  official  employers.  Sometimes  a  profes- 
sion closely  organized  (like  law,  medicine,  the  army  and 
navy,  and  the  Church)  is  so  related  to  the  state  that  it 
is  difficult  to  decide  whether  it  should  be  called  a  profes- 
sion entrusted  by  the  state  with  certain  functions,  or  a 
professionalized  department  of  the  state.  These  bodies 
have,  from  the  point  of  view  of  their  members,  the  great 
advantage  over  parliamentary  democracy  that  the  pres- 
sure which  an  individual  member  may  hope  to  exercise 
over  the  actions  of  the  community  is  continuous.  When 
the  miner  thinks  of  his  Federation,  or  the  teacher  of  his 
Union,  he  does  not  feel,  as  Rousseau  said  of  the  British 
voter,  a  slave  from  one  election  to  another.5 

This  continual  movement  of  feeling  and  of  fact  towards 
vocational  organization  has  been  accompanied  in  Britain, 
as  elsewhere,  by  a  marked  change  in  conscious  social 
theory.  That  change  has  taken  two  main  forms.  In  the 
first  place,  the  democratic  convention  that  "the  majority 

8  Ibid.,  pp.  505,  506,  508. 

4  Sidney  Webb,  in  his  preface  to  the  new  edition  of  Fabian  Essays, 
says,  with  reference  to  the  increase  of  the  power  of  the  Labor  Party,  that 
for  a  socialist  party  "the  only  practical  basis"  is  "the  wage  earning  class" 
and  "the  only  available  machinery  .  .  .  the  Trade  Union  organization" 
(p.  14). 

6  Control  Social,  Book  III,  Chap.  XV. 

106 


THE  CONTROL  OF  NATIONAL  COOPERATION 

shall  rule"  is  being  repudiated  by  those  who  argue  that  a 
vigorous  minority  must  in  any  case  rule,  and  that  it  is 
better  for  society  that  it  should  rule  by  openly  coercing 
the  inert  majority  than  by  secretly  deceiving  it.  In  the 
second  place,  the  convention  that  a  territorial  district 
should  be  the  unit  on  which  territorial  power  is  based  is 
attacked  as  having  been  made  obsolete  and  harmful  by 
the  development  of  scientific  methods  of  manufacture  and 
transport. 

The  problem  of  the  relation  of  vocationalism  to  terri- 
torial democracy  will  probably,  in  the  end,  be  seen  to  be 
rather  one  of  degree  in  the  coordination  of  several  expedi- 
ents than  of  a  choice  between  mutually  exclusive  princi- 
ples. The  organization  of  persons  employed  in  a  common 
occupation  is  not  only  inevitable,  but  in  many  ways  so- 
cially valuable.  The  postman,  or  hotel  waiter,  or  sailor, 
or  teacher  or  dock-laborer,  when  he  has  joined  his 
union  finds  his  own  life  at  once  more  dignified  and  more 
happy,  because,  like  a  lawyer  or  a  doctor  or  a  landowner 
or  stockbroker,  he  can  "have  his  say"  about  the  conditions 
under  which  he  lives.  I  have  been  for  some  years  an 
elected  representative  of  my  fellow-teachers  on  the  gov- 
erning body  of  my  university,  and  I  am  convinced  that 
my  life  and  theirs  is  made  better  by  the  arrangement 
that  representatives  of  the  teaching  staff  shall  influence 
university  administration.  I  am  also  convinced  that  this 
benefit  is  not  confined  to  the  members  of  the  particular 
occupation  in  which  such  a  vocational  element  exists.  I 
am  more  likely,  as  the  world  now  is,  to  receive  my  letters 
and  my  coal  regularly  and  conveniently  if  the  unions  of 
the  postmen  and  the  miners  play  a  part  in  postal  and  min- 
ing administration;  and  the  students  of  any  university 

107 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

will  receive  better  instruction  if  the  organized  teachers 
of  the  university  help  to  govern  it.  Anyone  who  has 
worked  in  the  hitherto  unorganized  occupation  of  jour- 
nalism will  feel  that  not  only  the  personal  happiness  of 
the  journalist,  but  the  public  good  would  be  increased  if 
journalists  belonged  to  a  profession  sufficiently  organized 
to  enable  them  to  assert  their  self-respect  against  a  bully- 
ing or  corrupt  proprietor.  The  feeling  of  human  solidar- 
ity is  so  difficult  to  create  under  modern  conditions  that 
we  cannot  afford  to  leave  unused  for  the  purposes  of  so- 
cial cooperation  the  unforced  knowledge  of  each  other, 
and  the  direct  good-will,  which  may  arise  as  an  incident 
of  common  occupation.  When  my  fellow-teachers  and 
myself  meet  to  elect  a  representative,  we  have  a  knowl- 
edge of  each  other  and  a  cooperative  feeling  for  each 
other,  which,  if  we  were  only  related  as  inhabitants  of  a 
town  ward,  would  either  not  be  produced  at  all,  or  only 
be  produced  by  weeks  of  distasteful  and  perhaps  insincere 
electioneering.  There  may  even  be  certain  cases  where 
the  members  of  a  trade  or  profession,  freely  associated 
in  self-governing  bodies,  can,  as  in  the  case  of  the  pro- 
posed Building  Guild,  contract  with  the  state  for  the  per- 
formance, with  the  help  of  state-provided  capital,  of  in- 
dustrial work.  This  is  an  economic  problem  which  future 
experience  will  decide,  though  past  experience  is  not  very 
encouraging. 

The  most  serious  difficulty  of  the  problem  of  vocational 
organization  shows  itself  when  the  members  of  a  voca- 
tional body  claim  not  merely  to  influence  the  conditions 
of  their  employment,  or  to  associate  freely  for  wealth- 
production,  but  to  decide,  as  against  any  other  body  or 
person,  the  demarcation  of  their  function,  the  terms  of 

1 08 


THE  CONTROL  OF  NATIONAL  COOPERATION 

entry  to  and  expulsion  from  their  body,  and  the  price  at 
which  their  services  shall  be  rendered  to  the  community. 
This  difficulty  becomes  more  acute  when  the  vocational 
bodies  as  a  whole  make  it  their  policy  to  support  each 
other's  claims;  and  with  this  purpose  attempt  to  weaken 
or  abolish  the  ultimate  controlling  power  of  the  parlia- 
mentary state.  In  facing  this  difficulty  we  must  not  as- 
sume that  any  completely  satisfactory  solution  is  possi- 
ble. It  may  be  that  mankind  will  never  discover  how  to 
enjoy  the  advantages  of  large-scale  industrial  organiza- 
tion without  the  disadvantages  of  social  friction  and  politi- 
cal confusion.  But  we  can  at  least  hope  that  men  will 
some  day  invent  a  better  solution  than  the  existing  com- 
bination in  Britain  and  America  and  France  of  "machine 
politics/'  professional  selfishness,  and  trade  union  "ca' 
canny." 

The  Guild  Socialists  claim  that  their  solution  is  already 
complete  and  satisfactory;  and  before  judging  that  claim 
the  student  should  attempt  to  make  for  himself  an  objec- 
tive panorama  of  the  society  of  the  future,  similar  to 
that  which  I  recommended  him,  in  the  last  chapter,  to 
make  of  the  society  of  the  present.  If  he  assumes  that 
men  retain  their  present  biological  type,  live  in  their 
present  or  greater  numbers,  and  use  machinery,  railways, 
and  other  means  of  large-scale  production  and  distribu- 
tion, he  may  feel  as  he  contemplates  the  future  that  the 
first  evil  to  be  avoided  is  the  unwilling  and  joyless  toil 
of  men  and  women  who  are  kept  at  work  by  the  discipline 
of  mere  habit,  or  by  the  fear  of  starvation.  As  large  a 
proportion  of  the  future  population  for  as  large  a  part  of 
the  day  as  possible  should  have  zest  in  their  work.  Zest, 
again,  requires  variety  of  work,  for  different  men  in  ad- 

109 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

justment  to  their  natural  differences,  and  for  each  man 
from  year  to  year.  But  our  need  for  variety  must  be  co- 
ordinated with  our  need  for  security,  and  for  a  sufficient 
supply  of  material  wealth;  and  security  and  wealth  re- 
quire that  variety  of  training  and  occupation  should  re- 
sult, not  solely  from  the  following  of  casual  impulse,  but 
also  from  organized  and  to  some  extent  disciplined  pur- 
pose. If  he  coordinates  all  these  factors  of  the  prob- 
lem, he  will  picture  to  himself  a  population  trained  both 
to  expect  a  good  deal  of  hard  and  at  times  distasteful 
work,  and  also  consciously  to  value  change  and  adven- 
ture. Men  and  women  in  such  a  population  would  be 
encouraged  to  enjoy,  as  producers,  the  acquirement  of 
new  forms  of  skill,  and,  as  consumers,  the  development 
of  new  personal  needs.  Painters  would  not  always  paint 
over  and  over  again  the  same  picture,  nor  authors  write 
the  same  book,  nor  professors  give  the  same  courses  of 
lectures,  nor  machine-tenders  work  always  on  the  same 
pattern,  or  the  same  machine,  or  even  on  the  same  raw 
material.  Old  men  would  not  be  expected  to  live  the 
same  lives  as  young  men,  nor  women  as  men,  nor  people 
of  weak  health  as  people  of  robust  health.6  Men  with 
few  desires  and  weak  wills  would  not  ask  or  receive  the 

6  A  very  able  physician  once  said  to  me,  "More  than  half  the  work  of 
the  world  is  done  by  the  neurasthenics,"  i.e.,  men  who  are  easily  fatigued 
can  do,  if  allowed,  as  Darwin  was,  to  take  their  own  time  about  it,  an 
astonishing  amount  of  useful  work.  This  is  largely  true  among  the  mid- 
dle and  professional  classes.  On  the  other  hand,  in  nearly  all  decently 
paid  manual  occupations,  a  man  must  either  do  a  full  day's  work  or  none 
at  all;  and  some  of  the  most  tragic  figures  I  have  known  have  been  in- 
telligent and  public-spirited  men,  of  the  type  well  known  in  revolutionary 
clubs  and  societies,  who  would  have  done  quite  well  as  part-time  journal- 
ists or  poets  or  professors  but  for  whom  as  "work-shy"  laborers  no  self- 
respecting  way  of  life  was  possible. 

110 


THE  CONTROL  OF  NATIONAL  COOPERATION 

same  opportunities  of  enjoyment  as  men  of  many  desires 
who  were  willing  to  undertake  intense  exertions.  Society 
would  demand  special  efforts  and  offer  special  opportu- 
nities to  those  whose  natural  powers  were  specially  valu- 
able to  their  fellows.  All  would  understand  that  short 
hours  of  work,  interesting  leisure,  and  the  satisfaction  of 
material  needs,  require  successful  wealth-production;  and 
men  and  women  would  in  general  be  as  glad  if  a  new  way 
of  spinning  wool  made  it  possible  in  fewer  hours  to  pro- 
duce cheaper  and  better  yarn,  as  they  would  be  if  a  new 
composer  made  opera  music  more  delightful,  or  a  new 
way  of  building  theatres  made  it  possible  for  a  larger 
audience  to  hear  an  opera  in  comfort,  or  a  new  way  of 
fixing  nitrogen  diminished  the  toil  of  agricultural  plough- 
ing and  sowing.  In  such  a  society,  it  might  be  possible 
within  each  trade  to  get  rid  of  the  grudging  attitude  to 
increased  production  as  such,  the  "ca'  canny"  policy 
which  diminishes  both  the  wealth  created  by  work  and 
the  happiness  of  the  worker  as  he  creates  it. 

The  student  would  then  ask  himself  whether  the  cre- 
ation of  a  "blackleg-proof"  vocationalized  society,  and 
the  destruction  or  serious  weakening  of  territorial  democ- 
racy, would  be  likely  to  help  in  creating  and  maintaining 
such  a  way  of  life.  Vocations,  of  course,  differ  widely 
from  each  other,  and  the  limits  of  power,  and  forms  of 
organization  which  are  suitable  for  the  vocational  organi- 
zation of  fishermen  or  architects  or  teachers  may  not  be 
suitable  for  engine-drivers  or  doctors  or  soldiers.  But 
we  can,  I  think,  discover  certain  elements  in  the  problem 
which  are  common  to  all  kinds  of  vocationalism.  Mr. 
Lloyd  George,  for  instance,  who  is  a  member  of  the 
ancient  and  closely  organized  profession  of  the  Law,  said 

in 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

in  the  House  of  Commons  on  June  23,  1915,  "The  profes- 
sional mind  is  essentially  a  very  conservative  mind."  This 
conservatism  is  largely  due  to  a  psychological  tendency 
which  men  share  with  the  whole  animal  world.  All  ani- 
mals, and  apparently  some  plants,  form  habits,  and 
shrinking  from  the  breach  of  habit  is  only  the  negative 
side  of  our  positive  inclination  to  maintain  habit.  This 
shrinking  may  in  man  be  accompanied  by  an  expectation 
of  future  pain  in  the  process  of  rehabituation;  but  it  is  no 
more  due  to  that  expectation  than  the  closing  of  an  eyelid 
is  due  to  an  expectation  of  the  pain  which  will  be  inflicted 
by  an  approaching  finger.  The  shrinking  may  indeed 
exist  under  conditions  where  the  change  of  habit  when  it 
comes  is  felt  as  a  pleasant  relief,  or  as  a  relief  accom- 
panied only  by  intermittent  and  rapidly  diminishing  feel- 
ings of  discomfort.  Shrinking  from  change  of  habit  is 
specially  important  in  vocational  organization,  because, 
like  the  fear  instinct,  it  is  increased  in  force  when  it  is 
experienced  by  a  body  of  human  beings  assembled  in  one 
place,  or  otherwise  made  aware  of  a  common  impulse. 
The  shrinking  also  increases  with  age,  and  is  much 
stronger  after  twenty-five  years  of  age,  when  the  power 
of  rehabituation  tends  to  diminish,  than  in  a  child.  There 
is,  indeed,  hardly  any  departure  from  established  custom, 
however  necessary  and  rational,  against  which  a  practised 
agitator  cannot  hope  to  infuriate  a  large  proportion  of 
any  body  of  middle-aged  men  and  women,  belonging  to 
the  same  occupation,  who  can  be  made  aware  of  their 
common  instinctive  shrinking  from  change.  Shrinking 
from  change  in  a  vocation  is,  again,  greatly  strengthened 
by  the  tendency  to  attach  aesthetic  feeling,  and  indeed 
something  like  personal  affection,  to  any  traditional  art. 

112 


THE  CONTROL  OF  NATIONAL  COOPERATION 

Gothic  architecture,  classical  education,  canon  law,  navi- 
gation by  sails,  become  personalities  loved  for  themselves 
and  defended  with  passionate  loyalty.  I  shall  never  for- 
get the  emotion  of  an  old  Chelsea  bricklayer  to  whom 
five  and  thirty  years  ago  I  described  the  methods  of  rapid 
construction  which  I  had  seen  in  use  on  the  piers  of  the 
new  Battersea  Bridge.  "It  isn't  bricklaying,"  he  shouted, 
"it's  bloody  paving."  Shrinking  from  change  is  further 
strengthened  under  modern  conditions  by  our  instinctive 
resentment  to  human  interference  from  outside  with  the 
normal  course  of  our  impulses.7  A  man  who  might  have 
willingly  and  joyfully  changed  his  methods  if  left  alone 
will  show  irrational  anger  if  an  attempt  is  made  to  compel 
him  to  do  so;  and  yet  in  large-scale  production  he  must 
either  change  with  his  fellows  or  not  at  all. 

There  are,  of  course,  other  psychological  factors  which 
act  positively  in  encouraging  change  of  habit,  the  con- 
sciousness of  relief  from  monotony,  the  joy  of  invention, 
the  calculated  expectation  of  gain  or  fame,  the  love  of 
one's  fellow  men,  the  immediate  pleasantness  of  certain 
changes  in  method  which  are  the  "natural"  development 
of  an  ancient  art.  But  these  factors  are  likely  to  be  enor- 
mously stronger  in  exceptional  individuals  than  in  the 
majority  of  those  present  and  voting  at  a  meeting  of  mem- 
bers of  a  vocation. 

Vocational  conservatism  has  become  more  important 
in  our  own  time  owing  to  the  unexpected  effect  of  modern 
applied  science  on  the  principle  of  the  Division  of 
Labor.  When  Adam  Smith  began  the  first  chapter  of 
his  Wealth  of  Nations  with  the  statement  that  "The  great- 
est improvements  in  the  productive  powers  of  labor  .  .  . 

7  See  later,  Chap.  VH. 

"3 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

seem  to  have  been  the  effects  of  the  division  of  labor,"  he 
was  thinking,  as  his  instance  of  the  pin-makers  shows,  of 
the  manual  dexterity  acquired  by  the  constant  repetition 
of  an  identical  process.  But  machinery  can  now  perform, 
with  a  greater  exactness  than  the  most  delicate  manual 
skill,  almost  all  repetition  work;  and  it  is,  therefore, 
increasingly  easy  for  anyone  who  has  learnt  one  kind  of 
machine-tending  to  learn  another.  In  the  efficiency  of 
manual  work  to-day  the  two  main  factors  of  productivity 
are  the  willingness  of  the  workman  to  use  the  power  of 
the  machine  to  the  full,  and  the  trans ferability  of  labor 
from  one  machine  or  process  to  another  in  accordance 
with  changes  in  demand.  Both  factors  need  rather  in- 
creased "integration  of  labor"  (if  one  may  coin  that  term) 
than  increased  division  of  labor.  A  workman  who  can 
shift  from  one  process  to  another  is  more  likely,  ceteris 
paribus,  to  feel  zest  in  his  work  (and  to  escape  the  feel- 
ing of  being  "fed  up"),  and  also  more  likely  to  do  that 
work  which  is  most  needed,  than  one  who  can  only  su- 
perintend one  process.  Observers  of  eastern  economic 
development,  for  instance,  seem  to  be  agreed  as  to  the 
advantage  which  the  comparatively  transferable  Chinese 
workman  has  over  the  comparatively  non-transferable 
Hindu.  The  same  is  true  of  many  of  the  simpler  forms 
of  intellectual  work.  A  Government  Department  in  which 
routine  officials  are  from  time  to  time  shifted  to  new  duties 
gains  more  in  twenty  years  from  their  increased  zest  and 
trans  ferability  than  it  loses  from  their  decreased  skill  in 
the  few  weeks  following  each  change.  In  the  more  com- 
plex forms  of  intellectual  work,  the  question  whether  more 
integration  or  more  division  of  labor  is  required  depends 
on  the  peculiar  conditions  of  each  occupation,  or  even  the 

114 


THE  CONTROL  OF  NATIONAL  COOPERATION 

powers  and  interests  of  each  individual.  It  may  be  better 
for  society  that  the  trade  of  engineer  should  be  broken 
up  into  separate  professions  of  electrical,  mechanical, 
and  civil  engineering;  while  it  may  also  be  better  that 
classical  tutors  should  acquire  other  forms  of  skill  and 
knowledge  in  addition  to  their  "exact  scholarship";  and 
different  engineers  and  tutors  may  do  their  best  work,  one 
in  a  wider  and  another  in  a  narrower  field. 

This  last  consideration  leads  at  once  to  the  relation 
between  vocational  organization  and  that  idea  of  human 
variation  which  I  described  in  the  last  chapter.  Does 
the  use  of  vocational  organization  as  the  main  basis  of 
social  organization  help  us  to  conceive  of  our  fellows  as 
varied  individuals  fitted  for  varied  ways  of  living  and  not 
as  identical  replicas  of  a  uniform  type?  On  this  point 
Mr.  G.  D.  H.  Cole  in  his  book  Social  Theory  (1920) 
founds  his  chief  argument  for  the  superiority  of  voca- 
tional organization  over  the  existing  state.  "It  [the 
State],"  he  says,  "ignores  the  differences  between  men 
because  it  is  concerned  not  with  their  differences,  but  with 
their  identity,  and  its  function  and  interest  are  concerned 
with  men's  identity  and  not  with  their  differences"  (p. 
96).  "Let  us  try,"  he  says,  "to  see  clearly  what  are  the 
effects  of  this  principle.  It  excludes  from  the  primary 
functions  of  the  state  .  .  .  those  spheres  of  social  action 
which  affect  different  members  of  it  in  different  degrees 
and  in  various  ways"  (p.  96).  "Many  vital  industries 
and  services  .  .  .  affect  almost  everybody  in  very  much 
the  same  way.  We  must  all  eat  and  drink,  be  clothed, 
housed  and  warmed,  be  tended  in  sickness  and  educated 
in  childhood  and  youth,  and  our  common  needs  in  these 
and  other  respects  give  rise  to  a  common  relation,  that  of 

"5 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

consumers  ..."  (pp.  97  and  98).  "Coal  mining  affects 
the  coal  miner  in  quite  a  different  way  from  that  in  which 
it  affects  the  rest  of  the  people,  and  so  through  the  whole 
list  of  trades  and  vocations"  (p.  97).  "The  economic 
sphere  thus  falls  at  once  into  two  separable  parts — pro- 
duction and  consumption,  in  one  of  which  all  interests 
tend  to  be  identical,  while  in  the  other,  production,  they 
tend  to  be  different.  Consumption  is  thus  marked  out  as 
falling,  prima  jade,  within  the  sphere  of  the  state,  while 
production  is  no  less  clearly  marked  off  as  falling  outside 
it"  (p.  98).  In  all  this,  Mr.  Cole,  it  seems  to  me,  pre- 
cisely transposes  the  actual  tendencies  of  the  modern 
state  and  of  modern  organized  vocations.  The  great  ad- 
vantage of  the  present  state  is  its  insistence  on  the  "differ- 
ences" rather  than  the  "identity"  of  men.  We  must  all, 
as  Mr.  Cole  says,  "be  tended  in  sickness  and  educated  in 
childhood  and  youth,"  but  the  essence  of  modern  educa- 
tional and  public-health  administration  is  the  refusal  in 
those  respects  "to  ignore  the  differences  between  men"; 
and  it  is  the  same  with  law  and  police  and  taxation. 
"Identity,"  on  the  other  hand,  dominates  the  whole  habit 
of  trade-union  and  professional  thought.  The  policy  by 
which  the  Trade  Unions  have  improved  their  position, 
and  the  professions  have  maintained  theirs,  against  the 
whole  body  of  employers  and  consumers  has  been  based 
on  the  more  or  less  conscious  conception  of  an  identical 
standard  of  work  and  reward.  Everyone,  according  to 
the  half-formulated  ideas  of  the  average  trade  unionist 
or  "profession-conscious"  doctor  or  member  of  the  Na- 
tional Union  of  Teachers,  should  work  the  same  hours 
with  the  same  intensity,  and  for  the  same  wage;  and  all 
promotion  to  directing  posts  should  go  by  seniority;  and 

116 


THE  CONTROL  OF  NATIONAL  COOPERATION 

it  is  just  this  habit  of  thought  and  feeling  which  makes 
it  so  easy  for  a  working  man  to  think  in  terms  of  Marx's 
"abstract  labor." 

The  good  life,  again,  under  modern  large-scale  condi- 
tions, requires  not  only  willingness  to  change,  and  adjust- 
ment between  the  individual  and  his  social  function,  but 
also  the  accumulation  of  capital,  or,  what  is  the  same 
thing,  the  ability  of  a  community  to  organize  prolonged 
and,  for  a  time,  unproductive  labor,  in  order  to  make 
future  labor  more  productive.  Would  a  predominantly 
vocational  British  nation  have  been  able,  for  instance,  to 
create  the  British  railway  system?  That  railway  system 
was  built  by  the  voluntarily  invested  accumulations  of 
rich  men.  If  there  are  only  a  few  rich  men,  and  a  high 
general  average  of  comfort,  a  creation  of  capital  on  such 
a  scale  must  be  brought  about  by  taxation;  but,  as  the 
experience  of  countries  with  large  peasant  populations 
shows,  it  is  extremely  difficult  to  raise  heavy  taxation 
from  an  economically  equal  population.  The  main  practi- 
cal source  of  taxation  in  such  a  population  is  the  "rent" 
which  comes  from  differential  advantages  in  production. 
However  high  the  wages  of  miners  are,  and  however  hard 
it  is  to  tax  wages,  the  coal  produced  per  miner  by  those 
mines  which  are  better  than  the  "marginal"  mine  (which 
it  just  pays  to  work)  will  remain  as  a  possible  source  of 
public  revenue.  But  it  is  just  this  source  which  the  pres- 
ent guild-socialist  policy  of  the  Miners'  Federation  aims 
at  absorbing  into  wages.  The  railway  servants,  the  Liver- 
pool dockers,  the  doctors  and  professors,  will  in  the  same 
way  tend  to  claim  for  wages  and  salaries  "whatever  the 
traffic  will  bear";  and  it  will  need  a  powerful  state  to 
maintain  or  increase  revenue  against  this  tendency. 

117 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

All  these  problems  are,  of  course,  particular  cases  of 
the  general  problem  whether  the  members  of  a  commu- 
nity in  which  vocational  organization  is  predominant,  or 
of  one  in  which  state  organization  is  predominant,  will  be 
more  likely  to  direct  their  large-scale  action  by  a  calcu- 
lation of  its  effect  on  all  those  other  members  of  the  com- 
munity (including  the  members  of  future  generations) 
whose  lives  that  action  will  influence.  The  history  of 
urban  civilization  in  Europe  offers  on  this  point  a  mass 
of  evidence;  the  interpretation  of  that  evidence  is  not 
easy,  owing  to  the  changes  that  have  taken  place  in  the 
scale  and  methods  of  industrial  life;  and  the  work  of  in- 
terpretation has  not  yet,  so  far  as  I  know,  been  under- 
taken by  a  competent  and  impartial  social  historian.  I 
gather,  however,  without  first-hand  knowledge  of  the  his- 
torical sources,  that  in  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  cen- 
turies European  urban  civilization  was  mainly  based  on 
the  vocational  organization  of  the  guilds.  I  gather  also 
that  from  the  sixteenth  to  the  eighteenth  centuries  the 
power  of  the  guilds  declined,  and  that  by  the  beginning 
of  the  nineteenth  century  the  guilds,  with  the  important 
exceptions  of  the  law  and  the  Church,  had  been  almost 
completely  swept  away.  The  guild  socialists  of  to-day 
never  seem  to  me  to  allow  sufficient  weight  to  this  histori- 
cal fact  of  the  failure  of  mediaeval  guild  organization; 
Mr.  G.  D.  H.  Cole,  for  instance,  in  his  Social  Theory 
(1920),  says  "functional  association  .  .  .  has  a  pedigree 
to  the  full  as  long  and  as  honorable  as  that  of  the  state 
itself,  and  indeed  longer  and  more  honorable"  (p.  n). 
Mr.  Cole's  statement  is  only  an  instance  of  a  tendency, 
which  anyone  who  has  argued  with  guild  socialists  will 
have  noticed,  to  see  the  history  and  existing  facts  of  their 

118 


THE  CONTROL  OF  NATIONAL  COOPERATION 

own  form  of  organization  in  a  haze  of  romanticism,  and 
then  to  compare  it  with  a  savagely  realist  presentation  of 
the  territorial  democracy  which  constitutes  the  present 
"state/' 

There  seem,  it  is  true,  in  the  Middle  Ages  to  have  been 
cases,  mainly  in  architecture  and  the  arts  of  painting, 
sculpture,  and  jewelry,  where  uncontrolled  vocational  or- 
ganization produced  excellent  results.  Small  groups  of 
men,  organized  locally  as  painters'  or  builders'  or  jewel- 
ers' guilds,  encouraged  each  other  to  develop  their  art 
under  the  impulse  of  the  sheer  delight  of  creation  and 
often  under  the  leadership  of  some  dominant  personality. 
Perhaps  the  groups  of  jurists  who  at  Bologna  and  else- 
where developed  the  reconstruction  of  Roman  law  could 
have  been  described  as  guilds.  But  the  guilds  generally 
were  destroyed  by  their  tendency  to  form  hereditary 
monopolies,  and  their  inability  either  to  make  new  inven- 
tions themselves,  or  to  adapt  themselves  to  the  new  con- 
ditions resulting  from  the  inventions  of  outsiders,  or  to 
combine  effectively  for  the  general  purposes  of  good  gov- 
ernment. The  rise  of  natural  science  in  the  seventeenth 
century  was  accomplished  by  individuals,  or  by  free  asso- 
ciations of  enquirers  (like  the  Royal  Society  or  the  Acad- 
emy of  Science)  sometimes  patronized  by  a  monarchical 
state  and  opposed  by  the  guild  associations  of  the  Uni- 
versities and  the  Church.  The  introduction  of  machine- 
industry  in  the  eighteenth  century  was  accomplished  by 
individuals  or  free  associations  of  capitalists  usually 
working  in  places  chosen  because  they  were  outside  the 
range  of  guild  jurisdiction,  and  was  opposed,  broadly 
speaking,  both  by  such  relics  of  guild  organization  as  re- 
mained, and  by  the  new  Trade  Unions. 

119 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

The  problem  of  the  proper  function  of  vocational  or- 
ganization was  definitely  raised  in  Britain  during  the  war. 
At  the  risk  of  national  defeat  we  were  forced  to  consider 
how  a  particular  group  of  manual  industries — those  con- 
cerned with  the  production  of  munitions,  food,  and  cloth- 
ing— should  be  carried  on  so  as  to  produce  the  maximum 
result.  We  were  forced  to  practise  economy  in  the  selec- 
tion and  use  of  natural  ability  and  in  the  creation  and 
use  of  acquired  skill.  We  sought  for  persons  of  both 
sexes  possessing  special  ability,  and  tried  to  secure  that 
they  should  be  freed  from  all  work  which  persons  of  less 
ability  could  perform,  and  given  posts  which  offered  full 
scope  for  their  powers.  We  decided  what  proportion  of 
specially  able  persons  could  be  most  economically  as- 
signed to  the  army  and  navy,  and  what  proportion  to  in- 
dustry. In  particular,  we  looked  for  the  kind  of  natural 
ability  which  produces  inventions,  and  tried  to  secure  that 
every  inventor  should  be  encouraged  to  develop  his  ideas, 
and  that  every  successful  invention  should  be  exploited 
as  immediately  and  as  widely  as  possible.  In  training 
men  and  women  for  each  industry — whether  they  were 
persons  of  exceptional  ability  or  not — we  aimed  at  pro- 
ducing the  maximum  amount  of  personal  skill  in  the  mini- 
mum time  and  with  the  minimum  of  teaching  effort.  We 
gave  the  name  of  "dilution"  to  the  whole  process  of  econ- 
omizing natural  ability  by  the  grading  of  work,  and  of 
economizing  skill  by  its  rapid  production  and  organized 
distribution.  As  a  result,  in  spite  of  many  blunders,  we 
were  able  both  to  maintain  a  huge  army  in  the  field  and 
to  multiply  by  perhaps  two  or  three  our  national  produc- 
tion of  the  certain  forms  of  wealth.  And,  in  spite  of  uni- 
versal anxiety,  insufficiency  of  food,  and  long  hours,  most 

120 


THE  CONTROL  OF  NATIONAL  COOPERATION 

of  those  who  worked  under  the  new  conditions  seem  to 
have  felt  something  more  like  zest  in  their  work  than  was 
common  in  British  working-class  life  before  the  war.8 
Most  of  the  Trade  Unions  submitted  to  this  process  be- 
cause they  shared  the  general  recognition  of  the  national 
crisis;  but  it  was  clear  that  the  effective  force  which 
brought  it  about  came  rather  from  the  political  organiza- 
tion of  the  nation  than  from  its  vocational  organization. 

After  the  war  we  were  faced  by  two  needs,  both  urgent, 
though  less  urgent  than  the  avoidance  of  defeat  in  war. 
One  was  the  reabsorption  of  the  mobilized  men  into  in- 
dustry, with  speed  and  economy  in  teaching  them  the 
necessary  skill;  and  the  other  was  the  provision  of  houses, 
in  presence  of  an  admitted  shortage  in  the  supply  of  work- 
men for  the  building  trades,  and  the  admitted  fact  that 
such  inventions  as  the  "fountain  trowel"  and  "spray 
painting"  made  possible  an  immediate  and  enormous 
economy  of  labor  in  building.  In  both  cases  the  state 
pressed  forward,  and  the  vocational  organizations  hesi- 
tated or  resisted.  If  the  state  had  been  abolished,  or  if 
its  place  as  final  arbiter  had  been  taken,  as  Mr.  Cole  sug- 
gests,9 by  a  federation  of  vocational  bodies,  no  power 
would,  I  am  convinced,  have  existed  powerful  enough  to 
overcome,  even  to  the  degree  which  was  actually  achieved, 
that  hesitation  and  resistance. 

8  See  my  Great  Society,  Chap.  XHL 

9  Social  Theory  (1920),  p.  136. 


121 


CHAPTER  VI 
PROFESSIONALISM 


IN  the  last  chapter  I  approached  the  relation  between 
vocationalism  and  other  forms  of  social  control  by 
taking  the  problem  as  a  whole;  in  this  chapter  I  shall 
approach  the  same  problem  by  choosing  certain  particu- 
lar vocations — law,  medicine,  the  army,  and  teaching.  I 
have  chosen  "professions"  rather  than  Trade  Unions,  be- 
cause the  history  of  trade  unionism  among  British  manual 
workers  during  the  nineteenth  and  twentieth  centuries 
has  been,  not  merely  the  development  of  a  form  of  social 
organization,  but  also  a  struggle  between  the  masses  and 
the  classes  for  the  possession  of  the  national  means  of  pro- 
duction. I  shall  so  be  enabled  to  avoid  some  of  the  con- 
fusion arising  from  that  struggle;  since  most  of  the  mem- 
bers of  the  professions  which  I  have  chosen  are  either 
above  or  near  the  economic  average  of  the  nation,  and 
since  the  means  of  production  are  not  owned  in  these 
cases  by  a  propertied  class. 

I  will  begin  with  the  ancient  and  closely  organized 
profession  of  the  law.  In  1916,  when  it  was  still  doubt- 
ful whether  the  national  need  for  munitions  would  over- 


122 


PROFESSIONALISM 

come  the  average  trade  unionist's  shrinking  from  change 
of  habit  and  his  difficulty  in  preferring  national  to  voca- 
tional interests,  the  Law  Times  (the  organ  of  the  solici- 
tors) wrote  (on  January  8)  that  "The  growing  sense  of 
responsibility  in  trade  union  circles  should  make  it  possi- 
ble to  arrive  at  a  satisfactory  solution  .  .  .  with  regard 
to  the  dilution  of  labor.  Public  opinion  is  sufficiently 
strong  nowadays  to  ensure  that  the  trade  unionists  here 
will  be  as  patriotic  as  their  confreres  in  France  and  Ger- 
many." It  obviously  never  occurred  to  the  Editor  of  the 
Law  Times  that  the  same  appeal  and  the  same  threat 
could  ever  be  addressed  to  his  own  profession.  During 
the  war  no  attempt  was  made  to  introduce  "dilution" 
into  the  two  privileged  sections  (solicitors  and  barristers) 
of  the  legal  profession;  more  women  and  boys  were  used 
in  the  subordinate  work  of  the  lawyers'  clerks  who  do 
not  belong  to  the  profession;  but  women  were  not  intro- 
duced into  the  profession  itself  until  Parliament,  women 
having  been  enfranchised,  passed  after  the  war  a  statute 
forbidding  their  exclusion.1  Neither  during  nor  after  the 
war  has  anything,  as  far  as  I  know,  been  done  to  throw 
either  branch  of  the  profession  open  to  able  members  of 
hitherto  excluded  social  classes,  or  (except  to  a  minor  ex- 
tent in  the  case  of  young  men  who  have  done  military 
service)  to  shorten  and  economize  the  process  of  training, 
or  to  secure  by  any  method  of  dilution  that  no  member 

1  On  this  point  the  opposition  of  interest  and  feeling  between  the  mid- 
dle-class professions  and  the  working-class  Trade  Unions  creates  a  real 
though  hitherto  insufficient  force  on  the  side  of  the  public  good.  Mrs. 
Alderton  at  the  1920  meeting  of  the  Women's  Liberal  Federation  said, 
"The  Labor  Party  was  doing  its  utmost  to  open  the  professions  to 
women,  and  the  professional  classes  were  doing  their  utmost  to  see  that 
the  trades  were  open  to  women"  (Westminster  Gazette,  May  12,  1920). 

123 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

of  the  profession  should  at  any  moment  be  performing 
functions  either  below  or  above  his  powers.  If  such  pro- 
posals had  been  made  during  the  war,  it  would  have  been 
at  least  doubtful  whether  the  "sense  of  responsibility"  in 
the  profession,  or  the  pressure  of  "public  opinion"  from 
outside,  would  have  secured  their  acceptance.  As  things 
are,  the  legal  profession  in  England  exemplifies  in  the 
most  extreme  form  all  those  defects  of  vocational  organi- 
zation which  are  most  injurious  to  the  community.  Law- 
yers do,  of  course,  much  very  useful  work;  but  a  layman 
who  asks  himself  what  effect  the  professional  organization 
of  lawyers  has  on  that  work  is  often  driven  to  the  same 
conclusion  as  Mr.  Arnold  Bennett  when  he  says,  "I  come 
of  a  family  of  lawyers  and  ...  I  consider  that  their  two 
great  Trade  Unions  are  among  the  most  vicious  opponents 
of  social  progress  in  Britain  to-day"  (Daily  News,  August 

4,  1915). 

The  absence  of  any  serious  attempt  to  introduce  an 
improved  organization  of  legal  work  does  not  merely  re- 
sult in  excessive  profits  to  lawyers.  Some  lawyers  do 
make  wastefully  large  incomes;  but  the  main  loss  to  the 
community  comes  from  the  way  in  which  the  profession 
is  organized  from  top  to  bottom:  the  policy  of  "make- 
work"  is  carried  far  beyond  the  dreams  of  the  worst 
unions  of  plumbers  or  bricklayers:  the  force  which  main- 
tains the  rigid  division  between  barrister  and  solicitor  is 
the  fact  that  it  causes  an  enormous  amount  of  legal  work 
to  be  done  and  paid  for  twice  over:  the  whole  legal  pro- 
fession opposes  the  formation  of  a  land-registry  which 
would  shorten  the  process  of  transferring  real  property 
as  the  power-loom  shortened  the  process  of  weaving  cloth: 
the  assize  system  and  the  monopoly  of  higher  judicial 

124 


PROFESSIONALISM 

work  by  the  London  Courts  creates  the  greatest  possible 
amount  of  labor  for  the  least  possible  result  in  judicial 
decisions:  the  vacations  close  nearly  all  the  courts  for  a 
third  of  the  year.  The  lawyers  themselves  practically 
decide  what  shall  or  shall  not  be  "legal"  work;  and  just 
as  the  mediaeval  Church  tried  to  make  reading  and  writ- 
ing a  monopoly  of  the  clerical  profession,  so  the  English 
lawyers  try  to  secure  that  the  mechanical  filling  up  of 
forms,  which  could  be  done  by  a  girl  typist  in  a  business 
office  or  government  department,  shall  be  "professional" 
work,  to  be  done  waste  fully  and  paid  for  extravagantly. 
The  barristers  fix  their  own  prices  for  work  of  which  they 
have  obtained  a  legal  monopoly.  The  conditions  of  en- 
trance to  the  profession  are  in  effect  controlled  by  the 
existing  members.  In  both  branches  of  the  law  every 
attempt  is  made,  by  the  exaction  of  large  fees  for  admis- 
sion, to  secure  that  entrance  to  the  profession  shall  be 
confined  to  young  "gentlemen";  and,  in  the  case  of  the 
solicitors,  the  system  of  "articled"  apprenticeship,  with 
a  fee  of  £450,  is  deliberately  intended  to  give  an  advan- 
tage to  the  son  or  nephew  of  a  solicitor  over  all  the  other 
competitors.  An  essential  condition  of  all  vocational  or- 
ganization should  be  that  all  those  whose  work  is  con- 
trolled by  any  vocational  body  are  given  a  voice  in  the 
direction  of  that  control.  The  professional  organization 
of  the  law  in  England  offends  throughout  against  that 
principle.  The  main  body  of  the  barristers  themselves 
have  no  effective  power  against  the  little  clique  of  elderly 
"benchers"  of  the  Inns  of  Court  who  rule  the  bar:  the 
solicitors  have  no  effective  voice  in  arrangements  made 
by  the  bar  and  affecting  their  interests:  the  whole  organi- 
zation of  the  solicitors  is  carefully  contrived  to  prevent 

125 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

the  skilled  "managing  clerks,"  who  often,  as  they  did  in 
Dickens'  time,  carry  on  the  whole  serious  work  of  an 
office  for  the  profit  of  senile  or  idle  or  incapable  solicitors, 
from  acquiring  any  influence  over  the  conditions  of  their 
work. 

Anyone  who  is  familiar  with  the  passionate  affection 
of  most  lawyers  for  the  existing  system  will  recognize  that, 
although  individual  calculation  of  pecuniary  profit  plays 
a  large  part  in  maintaining  that  system,  lawyers  are  not 
necessarily  more  consciously  selfish  than  other  men.  If 
the  study  of  psychology  formed  part  of  the  training  of  a 
lawyer,  it  might  be  possible,  for  instance,  for  lawyers  to 
understand  their  own  shrinking  from  the  changes  of  habit 
involved  in  legal  reform,  and  to  see  that  shrinking  in  its 
relation  to  some  general  theory  of  human  conduct.  As  it 
is,  the  lawyer  surrenders  himself  as  completely  to  his 
hatred  of  the  "faddists"  and  "bounders"  who  propose 
change,  as  a  dog  does  to  the  sensation  of  fear.  Law- 
reform,  was,  a  century  ago,  supported  by  a  large  body  of 
British  legal  opinion.  That  in  our  time  has  ceased  to  be 
the  case.  If  legal  reconstruction  is  now  to  take  place  it 
must  be  carried  out  by  Parliament  without  the  help  of 
the  profession;  and  Parliament  will  not  undertake  that 
task  except  as  a  result  of  a  general  recognition  of  the 
urgency  of  the  whole  problem  of  vocational  organization. 

One  of  the  most  important  functions  of  any  vocational 
body  is  the  continuous  revision  and  increase  of  the  her- 
itage of  knowledge  and  thought  which  comes  within  its 
sphere.  In  the  case  of  law  this  function  is  peculiarly 
important.  Law  is  the  framework  of  the  social  machine; 
and  if  a  sufficient  number  of  instructed,  free,  and  fertile 
thinkers  could  set  themselves  to  ask  in  the  light  of  our 

126 


PROFESSIONALISM 

modern  knowledge  of  history,  politics,  and  psychology, 
what  are  the  purposes  of  law,  and  by  what  means  those 
purposes  can  be  attained,  an  incalculable  improvement  in 
human  relations  might  result.  But  a  report  of  the  Fabian 
Research  Committee,  which  had  access  to  a  great  deal  of 
professional  knowledge,  spoke  in  1917  of  "the  undisguised 
contempt  in  which  both  solicitors  and  barristers,  notably 
those  who  have  attained  success  in  their  profession  and 
control  its  organization,  hold,  and  have  always  held,  not 
only  all  scholarship  or  academic  learning  of  a  professional 
kind,  but  also  any  theoretic  or  philosophic  or  scientific 
treatment  of  law."2  Anyone  who  has  interested  himself 
from  outside  the  profession  in  the  possible  improvement 
of  any  point  in  the  science  of  law  can  confirm  this  state- 
ment. I  myself,  for  instance,  was  working  a  few  years 
ago  at  the  problem  of  human  "purpose,"  and  it  occurred 
to  me  that  I  might  get  help  from  the  current  literature  of 
jurisprudence.  Lawyers,  on  and  off  the  Bench,  spend 
part  of  their  lives  in  examining  instances  of  human  con- 
duct, and  in  arguing  whether  acts  are  or  are  not  "inten- 
tional" or  "wilful"  or  "malicious,"  or  whether  the  doer 
is  or  is  not  "responsible"  for  them.  Their  text-books 

2  Special  Supplement  of  the  New  Statesman  on  Professional  Associa- 
tions (April  21,  1917).  The  four  supplements  (September  25  and  October 
2,  1916,  on  teachers,  April  21,  1917,  on  Doctors,  Lawyers,  and  Artists, 
April  28,  1917,  on  officials,  etc.)  are  by  far  the  best  source  of  infor- 
mation on  professional  organization  in  England.  It  is  a  pity  that  they 
have  not  yet  been  published  in  book  form. 

Progressive  American  lawyers  complain  of  similar  defects  in  the  tradi- 
tions of  the  American  profession.  Professor  Roscoe  Pound,  for  instance, 
is  quoted  in  the  New  Republic  of  March  u,  1916,  as  saying,  "So  long  as 
the  one  object  is  to  train  practitioners  who  can  make  money  at  the  Bar, 
and  so  long  as  schools  are  judged  chiefly  by  their  success  in  affording 
such  training,  we  may  expect  nothing  better." 

127 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

might,  I  thought,  contain  a  stock  of  carefully  analyzed 
experience  as  to  human  motive.  I  therefore  wrote  to  the 
ablest  and  most  learned  professor  of  law  whom  I  know, 
one  of  the  very  few  who  have  preserved  the  freshness  of 
mind  throughout  an  English  legal  training.  He  replied 
that  I  would  find  "the  generally  accepted  views  as  to  in- 
tention and  motive"  in  Stephen;  "But,"  he  added,  "I  don't 
think  that  you  will  find  that  the  English  lawyers  have 
realized  that  there  are  any  serious  psychological  difficul- 
ties; and  they  don't  need  to,  as  you  can  generally  shunt 
really  difficult  questions  on  to  the  jury."  I  understood 
my  friend's  statement  when  I  looked  up  Stephen's  History 
of  the  Criminal  Law  of  England.  In  Chapter  XVIII, 
Stephen  divides  all  acts  of  sane  human  beings  into  "in- 
voluntary" and  "voluntary."  The  only  involuntary  acts 
which  he  recognizes  as  performed  by  a  normal  "person 
of  full  age"  are  such  purely  automatic  reactions  as  heart- 
beating,  coughing,  efforts  to  avoid  falling,  etc.  All  other 
acts  of  such  a  person  are  "voluntary";  and  a  voluntary 
act  "is  a  motion  or  group  of  motions  accompanied  or  pre- 
ceded by  volition  and  directed  towards  some  object. 
Every  such  action  comprises  the  following  elements — 
knowledge,  motive,  choice,  volition,  intention;  and 
thoughts,  feelings,  and  motions,  adapted  to  execute  the 
intention.  These  elements  occur  in  the  order  in  which  I 
have  enumerated  them"  (Vol.  II,  p.  100).  And  again  (p. 
84),  "Human  beings  love  and  hate  each  other  because 
every  man  can  mentally  compare  his  neighbor's  actions, 
thoughts,  and  feelings  with  his  own."  This  is  a  rather 
confused  way  of  stating  Bentham's  doctrine  that  every 
voluntary  human  act  is  the  result  of  an  intellectual  choice 
of  means  for  attaining  a  preconceived  end.  About  a  cen- 

128 


PROFESSIONALISM 

tury  ago  Bentham  forced  that  doctrine  on  the  English 
lawyers  of  his  time,  who  would  have  been  happier  without 
any  doctrine  at  all.  Our  modern  lawyers,  finding  that 
Benthamism  as  expounded  and  simplified  by  Austin  and 
Stephen  is  both  easy  to  learn,  and  easy  to  reproduce  at 
professional  examinations  or  in  court,  have  been  satisfied 
with  it  ever  since. 

But  the  question  of  criminal  responsibility  is  only  a 
tiny  subdivision  of  the  problem  of  the  function  of  law. 
We  have  to  ask  what,  in  view  of  our  modern  knowledge, 
should  be  the  relation  of  law  to  habit,  to  public  spirit, 
to  the  psychology  of  inference  and  classification  as  part  of 
the  psychology  of  thought,  to  the  variations  between  hu- 
man beings,  and  to  the  relation  between  variety  and  uni- 
formity in  the  cooperation  of  a  large-scale  society.  Any 
enquiry,  however,  into  any  of  these  questions  must,  as 
things  now  are,  be  started  either  by  some  "crank"  of  in- 
dependent means,  who,  like  Bentham,  is  prepared  to  face 
the  hostility  of  his  profession,  or  by  some  university  or 
state  organization  which  represents  interests  external  to 
that  of  the  profession.  Perhaps  progress  may  some  day 
result  from  the  concentration  of  the  public  control  over 
the  profession  in  the  hands  of  a  Minister  of  Justice  re- 
sponsible to  Parliament,  and  assisted  by  a  sufficient  ad- 
ministrative and  educational  staff. 

The  one  point,  and  that  is,  of  course,  a  very  important 
one,  in  which  the  traditions  of  the  British  legal  profession 
agree  to  some  extent  with  the  public  interest  is  the  crea- 
tion and  maintenance  of  a  high  standard  of  professional 
"honor."  I  shall  deal  later3  with  the  problem  resulting 
from  the  fact  that  practitioners  in  the  learned  professions 

8  Chap.  Vin. 

129 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

have  to  perform  services  which  their  clients  are  from 
ignorance  unable  to  judge  in  detail,  and  with  the  valuable 
tradition  of  responsibility  which  has  been  created  to  meet 
that  problem.  In  countries  where  legal  practitioners  are 
less  closely  organized  than  in  England  the  public  are  in 
many  respects  less  protected  against  individual  sharp 
practice.  But  the  standard  of  legal  honor,  as  long  as  it 
is  maintained  as  practically  a  professional  secret,  is  apt  to 
take  curious  forms,  and  to  be  at  least  as  much  concerned 
with  the  protection  of  lawyers  in  general  against  the  pub- 
lic desire  that  they  should  do  more  work  for  less  money, 
as  with  the  protection  of  the  public  against  the  fraudulent 
conduct  of  individual  lawyers. 

While  the  organization  of  the  English  legal  profession 
has  remained  in  essentials  unchanged  since  the  seven- 
teenth century,  the  present  organization  of  our  medical 
profession  was  created  during  the  nineteenth  century; 
and  owing  to  the  Health  Insurance  Act  (1911),  the 
growth  of  a  state  and  municipal  medical  service,  and  the 
passing  of  the  Ministry  of  Health  Act  (1919),  it  will  cer- 
tainly be  further  changed  in  the  near  future.  But  these 
changes  will  only  conform  to  the  public  interest  if  the 
few  medical  reformers  are  supported  by  an  organized  and 
instructed  lay  opinion;  just  as  the  obviously  desirable 
admission  of  women  to  the  medical  profession  was  only 
carried  by  Parliament  and  the  non-professional  university 
bodies  against  the  violent  and  in  many  cases  unscrupulous 
opposition  of  the  great  majority  of  the  profession.4 

In  some  respects  the  professional  spirit  of  the  doctors 
in  England  is  much  better  than  that  of  the  lawyers.  A 

4  See  e.g.,  the  history  of  the  struggle  in  The  Life  of  Sophia  Jex-Blake, 
by  M.  G.  Todd  (1918). 

130 


PROFESSIONALISM 

body  of  doctors  do  not  talk  of  the  progress  of  their  science 
with  the  same  rampant  philistinism  which  is  heard  in  a 
body  of  lawyers.  The  training  and  work  of  a  doctor 
makes  an  appeal  to  the  instincts  both  of  scientific  curios- 
ity and  of  human  compassion  which  is  not  made  by  that 
memorizing  of  English  case-law  or  that  advocacy  of  what- 
ever side  has  hired  you,  which  forms  so  large  a  part  of  the 
work  of  an  English  lawyer.  So,  though  the  science  of 
law  has  stood  still  in  England  since  Bentham,  the  science 
of  medicine  is  transformed  every  decade.  But  the  in- 
stinctive shrinking  of  every  profession  from  the  effort  of 
rehabituation,  combined  with  a  narrow  calculation  of  indi- 
vidual advantage,  prevents  the  community  from  receiving 
the  full  benefit  of  that  transformation.  The  use  of  an 
enormous  and  increasing  body  of  applied  science  requires 
a  complex  and  constantly  changing  relation  between  va- 
rious forms  of  specialized  skill,  and  between  the  man  of 
unusual  and  the  man  of  average  mental  ability.  But  the 
professional  ideal  of  the  "general  practitioner"  is  based 
on  the  principle  which  Mr.  Cole  calls  "identity."  He 
aims  at  securing  that  every  practitioner  shall  enjoy  a  local 
monopoly,  made  effective  by  an  organized  boycott  of  all 
pushing  intruders:  that  within  the  area  of  his  monopoly 
he  shall  carry  out  any  treatment  which  he  deems  proper, 
without  the  necessity  of  keeping  his  knowledge  up  to  date, 
or  the  possibility  of  expert  criticism  or  discipline:  and 
that  when  he  retires  he  shall  be  able  to  sell  his  "practice" 
to  the  highest  bidder.5  He  knows,  uneasily,  that  he  is 

5  This  ideal  can  be  attained  with  some  success  under  the  system  set 
up  by  the  Insurance  Act  of  1911.  See  an  article  by  the  Medical  Corre- 
spondent of  the  Times  (December  29,  1916)  on  the  position  of  "the 
young  war-doctor  without  money."  "Nor  need  he  hope  that  in  time  one 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

fighting  a  losing  battle,  and  that  he  cannot  do  justice  to 
his  patients  without  the  help  of  the  microscope  of  the 
pathologist,  the  experience  of  the  nurse,  and  the  special 
ability  and  training  of  the  consultant.  He  gives  that  help 
to  his  richer  patients,  and  tries  to  prevent  himself  from 
thinking  too  much  about  what  his  poorer  patients  get  for 
their  shilling  fees  or  the  stamps  on  their  insurance  cards. 
Another  form  of  the  same  distrust  of  specialist  knowl- 
edge is  shown  in  the  professional  opposition  to  the  di- 
rection of  medical  teaching  by  men  who  are  primarily 

of  the  older  men  in  the  district  will  retire  and  so  release  patients  to  come 
to  him.  This  will  never  happen,  because  on  retiring  the  older  man  will 
sell  his  panel  practice  to  any  doctor  who  likes  to  pay  for  it.  ...  The 
sick  workman  in  actual  fact,  if  not  in  theory,  has  to  be  treated  by  the 
doctor  into  whose  hands  he  was  sold  by  the  outgoing  panel  practitioner. 
Doctors  with  ready  money,  not  necessarily  doctors  with  brains,  or  of 
special  qualifications  or  experience,  are  now  able  to  secure  and  keep  in 
their  own  hands  the  care  of  the  health  of  thousands  of  their  fellow- 
citizens."  As  to  the  possible  actual  working  of  the  boycott  see  the 
judgment  of  Mr.  Justice  McCardie  in  the  action  brought  by  four  doctors 
connected  with  a  Coventry  dispensary  against  members  of  the  Coventry 
branch  of  the  British  Medical  Association  (October  15,  1918).  As  to  the 
effect  of  the  present  system  on  the  knowledge  of  the  doctors  see  an  arti- 
cle by  the  Medical  Correspondent  of  the  Times  (June  16,  1916)  on  the 
annual  report  of  the  Medical  Officer  of  Health  for  the  Isle  of  Wight, 
"The  report  then  goes  on  to  show  how  impossible  it  is  for  doctors  to 
keep  up  their  knowledge  by  attending  hospital,  except  in  a  few  cases,  and 
how  the  public  suffer  thereby."  On  the  whole  subject  of  medical  pro- 
fessional organization  see  the  special  supplement  of  the  New  Statesman 
(April  21,  1917)  based  on  ample  inside  professional  information,  e.g.  (p. 
13),  "The  British  Medical  Association  .  .  .  has  always  .  .  .  vehemently 
objected  to  any  'dilution'  of  the  practitioner's  labor  by  the  wider  use  of 
midwives,  nurses,  and  health  visitors.  It  has  objected  that  any  salaried 
hierarchy  of  professionals  is  inconsistent  with  the  personal  dignity  and 
individual  freedom  of  the  practitioners;  that  the  creation  of  any  special- 
ism whatever  inevitably  diminishes  by  so  much  the  sphere  of  the  general 
practitioner." 

132 


PROFESSIONALISM 

scientists  and  teachers  rather  than  practitioners.  The 
medical  schools  of  England  have  grown  out  of  voluntary 
private-adventure  combinations  of  doctors  who  opened 
classes  at  the  hospitals.  They  were  paid,  partly  by  tuition 
fees,  and  partly  by  the  established  custom  that  the  young 
practitioner  should  send  his  more  difficult  cases,  if  the 
patient  could  afford  to  pay,  to  his  former  teacher  as  con- 
sultant. It  is  only  slowly  that  the  professional  scientist 
has  gained  any  chance  of  appointment  to  hospital  teach- 
ing posts.  Meanwhile  in  the  public-health  service  of 
the  larger  cities,  in  the  research  departments  of  certain 
hospitals,  here  and  there  in  the  medical  faculty  of  a  uni- 
versity, or  in  the  offices  of  the  Ministry  of  Health,  the 
whole  question  of  the  organization  of  the  profession  in  its 
relation  to  the  general  good  is  being  thought  of  from  a 
larger  than  the  professional  point  of  view.  A  small 
minority  of  progressive-minded  doctors,  for  instance,  be- 
lieve that  the  medical  profession  should  now  be  divided 
into  two  bodies  with  different  training  and  functions. 
While  many  other  occupations  need  "integration  of  labor," 
the  medical  profession  at  this  moment  needs,  they  argue, 
"division  of  labor."  Economy  and  efficiency  would  result 
from  a  combination  of  barristers  and  solicitors  into  one 
profession,  and  economy  and  efficiency,  in  the  same  way, 
resulted  when  in  1858  the  obsolete  separation  between 
the  rival  professions  of  physician,  surgeon,  and  apothe- 
cary was  broken  down  by  Parliament;  but  the  growth 
of  science  has  now,  it  is  contended,  made  it  impossible 
for  a  man  even  of  rather  unusual  ability  to  acquire  and 
remember  the  knowledge  necessary  both  for  the  preven- 
tion and  for  the  detection  and  cure  of  disease.  The  pro- 
fession of  preventive  medicine,  with  its  subordinate  or 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

coordinate  professions  of  analyst,  inspector,  sanitary  engi- 
neer, etc.,  should,  therefore,  be  separated  from  the  pro- 
fession of  curative  medicine,  with  its  subordinate  occu- 
pations of  nurse,  midwife,  masseur,  dispenser,  hospital 
attendant,  etc.;  though  a  free  interchange  from  one 
branch  to  another  of  persons  willing  to  qualify  themselves 
should  be  encouraged;  and  though  certain  coordinate 
professions  such  as  that  of  bacteriologist  should  serve 
both  branches  alike.  If,  however,  such  a  division  of  labor 
is  to  be  made  it  can  only  be  brought  about  by  lay  pressure 
and  parliamentary  action. 

The  present  position,  again,  of  medicine  in  Britain 
shows,  like  that  of  the  law,  how  necessary  it  is  that  as 
soon  as  a  vocation  acquires  social  power,  whether  by 
statute  or  in  fact,  the  state  (or  some  other  organization 
larger  than  a  single  vocational  body  and  less  biassed  than 
a  federation  of  such  bodies)  should  control  the  internal 
vocational  organization,  and,  in  particular,  the  franchise 
under  which  elections  and  referenda  within  the  vocation 
take  place.  When  a  ballot  is  being  taken  by  the  coal- 
miners  on  a  strike  which  will  check  every  kind  of  national 
industry,  the  whole  community  is  concerned  in  the  ques- 
tion whether  boys  are  allowed  to  vote,  or  whether  ade- 
quate precautions  are  carried  out  to  secure  correctness  in 
the  collecting  and  counting  of  votes.  Some,  though  by 
no  means  all  of  the  worst  faults  of  legal  professionalism, 
would  be  diminished  by  the  substitution  of  an  internal 
democracy  of  barristers  for  the  oligarchy  of  the  Benchers, 
and  by  giving  the  solicitors  a  real  voice  in  the  election 
of  the  persons  who  control  the  conditions  of  their  work. 
In  the  same  way,  nurses  and  chemists  and  dental  assist- 
ants should  be  able  to  influence  in  some  degree  any  body 


PROFESSIONALISM 

which  in  fact  controls  the  whole  of  their  work.  The  rela- 
tion, again,  of  a  purely  voluntary  professional  body,  like 
the  British  Medical  Association  or  the  amalgamated  So- 
ciety of  Engineers,  to  its  local  branches,  concerns  the  whole 
community  as  long  as  the  branches  can  set  in  action  the 
machinery  of  a  professional  boycott  or  a  strike  backed 
by  the  funds  of  the  whole  body. 

The  interest  of  a  modern  democratic  state  in  the  pro- 
fessional organization  of  the  army  is  even  greater  than 
its  interest  in  the  professional  organization  of  law  and 
medicine.  Control  of  law  and  medicine  concerns  the  effi- 
cient and  economical  performance  of  certain  necessary 
social  functions;  the  control  of  the  army  concerns  the 
existence  of  democracy  itself.  Modern  applied  science 
has  made  a  civilian  population,  however  numerous  and 
united,  absolutely  helpless  in  actual  fighting  against  even 
a  small  body  of  trained  and  equipped  soldiers.  There- 
fore, as  soon  as  a  Parliament  without  military  support 
finds  itself  opposed  to  a  united  army,  the  whole  conven- 
tion of  majority  rule  disappears  like  a  dream.  And  the 
will  of  a  modern  army  is  rather  that  of  the  long-service 
officer  than  that  of  the  short-service  soldier.  As  Professor 
Delbriick  wrote  in  1913,  "The  decisive  question  for  the 
inner  character  of  any  state  is,  to  whom  does  the  army 
belong,"6  and  again,  "An  army  which  has  once  been  dis- 
ciplined remains  in  the  hands  of  the  officer-corps,  whether 
the  Parliament  passes  mutiny  acts  or  not."7  The  revolu- 
tions of  1848  were  carried  out  by  civilians,  hastily  armed 
with  weapons  from  gun  shops  and  chimney-pieces,  firing 
bullets  cast  at  home  by  boys  and  girls.  Revolution,  in 

6  Regierung  und  Volkswille  (1913),  p.  133. 

7  Ibid.,  p.  134. 

135 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

the  twentieth  century  can  only  be  carried  out  by  mutinous 
troops,  who  have  retained  their  artillery  and  ammunition 
and  some  of  their  officers,  against  an  executive  govern- 
ment that  has  lost  all  or  nearly  all  its  military  support. 
The  only  civilian  weapon  which  is  even  partially  effective 
is  the  dislocation  of  all  production  and  distribution  by  a 
general  strike;  and  that  weapon  injures  the  rest  of  the 
population  as  much  or  more  than  it  injures  the  soldiers. 

Though  scientific  progress  has  made  more  urgent  the 
problem  of  the  relation  between  the  fact  of  military 
force  and  the  convention  of  majority  rule,  that  problem 
is,  of  course,  as  old  as  civilization.  In  Britain,  for  more 
than  a  century  after  the  military  rule  of  Cromwell's 
major-generals,  the  royalist  pronunciamento  of  1660,  and 
the  Whig  pronunciamento  of  1688,  every  English  poli- 
tician was  acutely  conscious  of  the  political  power  of  a 
professional  army.  Blackstone,  the  great  Tory  jurist, 
wrote  in  1765  of  soldiers  under  a  Mutiny  Act  as  "reduced 
to  a  state  of  servitude  in  the  midst  of  a  nation  of  free- 
men" and  warned  his  fellow-countrymen  "not  to  intrust 
slaves  with  arms."8  But  throughout  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury (in  spite  of  conflicts  behind  the  scenes  between  the 
Cabinet  and  Queen  Victoria  over  the  position  of  the  royal 
Commander-in-Chief)  almost  every  British  voter  assumed 
as  a  matter  of  course  that  the  army  would  obey  the  Minis- 
ters, that  the  Ministers  would  obey  any  parliamentary 
majority;  and  that  no  considerable  parliamentary  minor- 
ity would  support  the  political  action  of  the  army.  The 
danger,  however,  was  always  there,  and  was  accentuated 
by  the  fact  that  nineteen  officers  out  of  twenty  were  in- 
tensely class-conscious  members  of  one  social  class,  and 

8  Commentaries,  Vol.  I  (1765),  p.  416. 

136 


PROFESSIONALISM 

adherents  of  one  political  party.  In  the  spring  of  1914 
the  British  nation  was  suddenly  reminded  of  that  fact. 
The  convention  of  majority  rule  has  never  existed  in  Ire- 
land, and  in  the  winter  of  1913-1914  the  Ulster  minority 
had  openly  armed  themselves  for  resistance  to  Home 
Rule,  and  were  supported  by  the  almost  unanimous  sym- 
pathy and  encouragement  of  English  "Society"  and  the 
Conservative  Party.  Mr.  Bonar  Law,  the  leader  of  the 
Conservative  Party,  said  at  Dublin  (November  28,  1913), 
"I  ask  him  [Mr.  Asquith]  to  turn  his  mind  to  the  history 
of  the  great  Revolution.  Then  the  country  rose  against  a 
tyranny.  It  was  the  tyranny  of  a  King,  but  other  people 
besides  Kings  can  exercise  tyranny  and  other  people  be- 
sides Kings  can  be  treated  in  the  same  way.  .  .  .  There 
was  a  revolution  and  the  King  disappeared.  Why?  Be- 
cause his  own  army  refused  to  fight  for  him."  On 
September  20,  1913,  at  Antrim,  Sir  Edward  Carson  de- 
clared that  he  and  his  associates  had  "pledges  and  prom- 
ises from  some  of  the  greatest  generals  in  the  army,  that 
when  the  time  comes,  and  if  it  is  necessary,  they  will  come 
over  to  help  us  to  keep  the  old  flag  flying,  and  to  defy 
those  who  would  dare  invade  our  liberties."  Mr.  F.  E. 
Smith  (since  Lord  Chancellor)  was  a  "galloper"  in  Sir 
Edward  Carson's  force,  and  on  February  n,  1914,  said 
in  his  speech  at  the  Hotel  Cecil  that  he  "welcomed  the 
Ulster  movement  because  it  enabled  them  to  challenge 
the  Parliament  Act,"  which  had  rendered  it  possible  to 
pass  legislation  over  the  veto  of  the  House  of  Lords.  On 
March  21,  1914,  the  officers  at  the  Curragh  camp  let  it 
be  known  that  they  were  unwilling  to  march  into  Ulster. 
On  March  23,  Mr.  Bonar  Law  declared  that  "any  officer 
who  refuses  is  only  doing  his  duty."  On  March  25,  the 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

Morning  Post  announced  that  "The  army  has  killed  the 
Home  Rule  Bill."  The  other  Conservative  papers  fol- 
lowed suit,  and  openly  rejoiced  in  the  fact  that  the  army 
officers  and  their  friends  seemed  to  have  put  Mr.  Asquith 
into  a  position  in  which  he  could  neither  enforce  disci- 
pline without  civil  war,  nor  yield  without  political  anni- 
hilation. On  March  24,  Lord  Northcliffe's  Daily  Mail 
placarded  all  London  with  a  contents-bill  saying,  "Bullies 
are  Cowards,"  and  in  the  afternoon  of  that  day  Mr. 
Astor's  Pall  Mall  Gazette  printed  "Their  Death  Blow" 
on  its  contents-bill.  The  Secretary  for  War  negotiated 
with  the  army;  and  after  his  agreement  had  been  repudi- 
ated by  the  Cabinet  he,  and  Lord  French,  and  the  other 
military  members  of  the  Army  Council,  resigned.  In  the 
end,  the  government  were  undoubtedly  influenced  in  their 
Irish  policy  by  the  necessity  of  considering  the  opinion 
of  the  army.  The  army  did,  in  fact,  kill  the  Home  Rule 
Bill. 

As  I  write,  the  problem  of  military  force  and  constitu- 
tional government  dominates  all  others  throughout  the 
continent  of  Europe.  From  Siberia  to  the  eastern  fron- 
tiers of  Germany,  and  in  Austria  and  Hungary,  troops  are 
wandering  about  fighting  and  destroying,  and  often  not 
knowing  whether  they  represent  a  constitutional  govern- 
ment or  a  rebellion.  In  France  Italy  and  Spain,  every 
statesman  in  forming  his  plans  has  to  think  about  the 
feeling  of  the  army;  and  no  one  in  any  of  those  countries 
knows  what  would  happen  if  a  general  election  returned 
an  anti-militarist  majority,  or  if  the  private  soldiers  re- 
fused to  obey  their  officers  when  ordered  to  put  down  a 
national  strike.  An  army,  if  it  is  to  be  efficient,  must  con- 
sist of  men  who  can  be  relied  on  to  kill  and  be  killed; 

138 


PROFESSIONALISM 

and  killing  and  being  killed  is  so  tremendous  a  fact  that 
to  those  who  are  trained  for  it  all  other  human  relation- 
ships seem  poor  and  superficial.  In  particular,  the 
professional  soldier,  with  his  experience  of  a  definite 
hierarchy  of  personal  command,  loathes  the  whole  elec- 
tioneering process  of  modern  democracy.  A  letter  in  the 
Morning  Post  of  July  17,  1917  (signed  General  Officer 
B.  E.  F.),  was  typical  of  this  feeling.  It  says,  "We  care 
not  one  jot  or  tittle  about  politics  or  politicians.  We 
abhor  the  former  and  mistrust  the  latter.  We  receive 
our  orders  from  our  superiors:  the  pledged  word  (so  often 
broken  when  convenient)  of  Ministers  does  not  concern 
us  in  the  very  slightest."  The  war  has  left  in  Britain  an 
army  much  larger  than  that  of  1913.  Among  the  pro- 
fessional officers  in  our  army  attempts  will  certainly  be 
made  in  some  regiments  to  get  rid  of  the  "temporary  gen- 
tlemen" of  the  war  and  to  restore  the  regimental  messes 
to  their  old  castle  type.9  We  have  also  an  enormous  body 
of  officers  and  men  trained  to  war,  either  in  the  reserve 
or  discharged,  but  still  more  or  less  organized  in  such 
bodies  as  "The  Comrades  of  the  Great  War,"  and  here 
as  in  America,  contempt  for  majority  politics  will  exist 
among  them  and  will  often  be  encouraged.  In  the  army, 
as  in  law  and  medicine,  professional  habits  of  thought 
not  only  create  opposition  to  political  rule  but  injure  mili- 
tary efficiency  itself.  Promotion  by  seniority,  routine 
thought,  and  routine  administration,  may  come  to  be 

9  The  Duke  of  Wellington  said  that  in  the  Peninsula  he  gave  commis- 
sions to  volunteers  and  non-commissioned  officers,  but  that  few  of  them 
remained  in  the  army.  "They  are  not  persons  that  can  be  borne  in  the 
society  of  the  officers  of  the  Army."  Report  of  Commission  on  Military 
Punishment,  p.  329,  quoted  by  M.  Elie  Halevy  in  his  admirable  Histoire 
du  Peuple  Anglais,  Vol.  I,  p.  73. 

139 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

loved  as  the  "real  soldiering,"  to  which  one  can  return 
after  the  strain  of  invention  and  rehabituation  and  the 
irritating  contact  with  the  civilian  mind  which  was  forced 
on  the  professional  officers  by  the  necessities  of  the  war 
of  1914-1918. 

One  can  suggest  expedients  for  lessening  the  dangers 
of  this  position,  though  one  cannot  convince  oneself  that 
those  expedients  will  secure  a  very  high  degree  of  safety. 
Democracy,  for  instance,  in  a  nation  with  a  great  army 
will  not  be  safe  unless  there  is  a  far  nearer  approximation 
to  social  equality  than  now  exists  in  Britain,  and  unless 
the  identification  of  the  officer-corps  with  a  small  social 
class  is  somehow  prevented.  It  may  be  possible  also  to 
alter  the  relation  between  officer  and  private,  and  per- 
haps to  lessen  the  professionalism  and  increase  the  intel- 
lectual elasticity  and  thereby  the  military  value  of  the 
officers,  by  seconding  them,  as  engineer  officers  are 
seconded  in  the  United  States,  during  part  of  their  career, 
to  civilian  employment.  I  myself  believe  that  a  great  in- 
crease of  military  efficiency  and  of  the  fighting  man's  zest 
in  his  life-long  preparation  for  an  occasional  crisis,  would 
result  from  a  much  wider  integration  of  labor  in  mili- 
tary organization.  If  some  of  the  abler  young  military 
officers  received  part  of  their  training  on  the  sea  and  in 
the  air  as  well  as  on  land,  and  some  naval  and  air  officers 
received  part  of  their  training  on  land,  it  might  be  possible 
greatly  to  increase  the  value  of  the  various  sections  of 
a  mixed  British  Expeditionary  Force  by  putting  it  under 
a  staff  trained  to  think  in  terms  of  all  three  elements. 
Such  an  arrangement  would  help  us  to  avoid  some  of  the 
conflicts  of  tradition  and  discipline  which,  as  long  as  war 
remains  as  a  recognized  factor  in  world-organization,  add 

140 


PROFESSIONALISM 

so  enormously  to  the  difficulty  of  those  combined  land 
and  sea  operations  which  are  characteristic  of  British 
warfare. 

In  any  case,  if  the  world  is  to  be  made  safe  for  democ- 
racy, the  relation  between  the  state  and  the  army  must 
be  clearly  understood  and  its  dangers  frankly  realized. 
And  the  state  must  be  strong;  Mr.  S.  G.  Hobson  in  his 
National  Guilds  (1914),  after  disparaging  the  state  in 
every  mood  and  tense,  admits  his  belief  that  "The  state 
with  its  government,  its  parliament,  and  its  civil  and  mili- 
tary machinery  must  remain  independent  of  the  guild 
congress.  Certainly  independent,  probably  even  su- 
preme" (p.  263).  The  history  of  the  last  three  thousand 
years  of  civilization  goes  to  show  that,  unless  the  ulti- 
mate supremacy  of  the  constitutional  body  which  con- 
trols the  army  is  a  good  deal  more  than  "probable,"  the 
army  will  not  be  effectively  controlled. 

But  it  may  be  that  the  permanent  interests  of  mankind 
are  more  deeply  concerned  with  the  professional  organi- 
zation of  teachers  than  even  with  the  professional  organi- 
zation of  soldiers.  Modern  large-scale  civilization  cannot 
continue  to  exist  unless  every  member  of  each  generation 
acquires  a  definite  minimum  of  reading,  writing,  arith- 
metic, language,  history,  and  science,  combined  with  a 
minimum  of  training  in  the  conscious  effort  of  thought 
and  in  habits  of  social  cooperation;  and  unless  a  con- 
siderable percentage  of  those  boys  and  girls  who  are  fitted 
to  receive  it  are  given  a  course  of  higher  education.  Only 
in  exceptional  cases  can  any  large  proportion  of  this  for- 
mal instruction  be  given  by  parents  at  home.  If,  there- 
fore, a  nation  of  fifty  millions  is  to  be  adequately  in- 
structed, about  eight  million  scholars  should  at  any 

141 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

moment  be  attending  school  or  college,  under,  say,  three 
hundred  thousand  teachers.  No  community,  however 
rich,  can  carry  out  this  tremendous  task  without  the 
utmost  economy  of  effort.  Every  school  or  college  build- 
ing must  be  occupied  to  the  limits  of  its  accommodation. 
Because  general  education  is  a  necessity  for  large-scale 
cooperation,  and  because  economy  of  teaching  power  re- 
quires regularity  of  attendance,  attendance  must  be  com- 
pulsory. Every  teacher  must  find  daily  before  him  the 
largest  class  that  he  can  effectively  teach;  and  the  train- 
ing colleges  and  university  departments  in  which  teachers 
receive  their  professional  training  must  be  filled  and  used 
with  the  same  economy  as  the  schools. 

Among  a  body  of  teachers  so  trained  and  employed 
vocational  organization  is  certain  to  appear;  although  it 
may  be  delayed  by  the  counter-influence  of  religious  di- 
vision, or  by  the  class-struggle  between  the  "gentleman" 
and  the  "elementary  teacher."  In  England,10  where  these 
causes  of  delay  have  been  stronger  than  in  some  other 
countries,  vocational  organization  appeared  late,  but  has 
during  the  last  few  decades  advanced  rapidly  in  numbers, 
political  power,  and  statutory  recognition.11  The  demand 

10  I  speak  in  this  section  of  "England"  (including  Wales),  rather  than 
of  "The  United  Kingdom"  or  "Britain,"  because  the  educational  organi- 
zation of  Ireland,  and,  to  a  less  degree,  of  Scotland,  is  very  different  from 
that  of  England. 

11  The  tentative  Teachers'  Registration  Council  of  1902  was  succeeded 
in  1907  by  an  Act  providing  for  the  Registration  Council  (representative 
of  the  Teaching  Profession)  which  came  into  existence  in  1912,  and  whose 
present  small  powers  will  probably  soon  be  added  to.     The  Education 
Act  of  1902  provided  for  the  cooperation  of  teachers  on  the  local  educa- 
tion committees  and  Mr.  Fisher's  Education  Act  of  1918  provided  for 
the  representation  of  teachers,  and  of  universities,  on  the  larger  pro- 
vincial bodies  which  it  aimed  at  creating.    In  1920  the  state  and  many 

142 


PROFESSIONALISM 

of  the  organized  teachers  for  a  still  larger  control  of  na- 
tional education  has  meanwhile  grown  in  force.  As  early 
as  1861  the  College  of  Preceptors  urged  that  a  Scholastic 
Council  should  be  formed  analogous  to  the  General  Medi- 
cal Council  (which  had  been  created  three  years  before) 
with  the  power  to  draw  up  and  control  a  register  of  quali- 
fied teachers.  But  at  that  time  the  "College"  consisted 
only  of  a  few  enthusiasts  who  were  thinking  of  reform 
in  middle-class  private-adventure  schools.12  When  in 
1919  the  annual  Conference  of  the  National  Union  of 
Teachers  passed  a  resolution  demanding  "direct  control 
of  education  by  the  teaching  profession,  in  partnership 
with  the  representatives  of  the  public,"13  the  Union  was 
already  one  of  the  most  powerful  political  forces  of  the 
country,  and  its  demand  was  likely  to  be  supported  by 
the  sympathy  of  the  great  Trade  Unions.  Mr.  S.  G. 
Hobson  in  his  National  Guilds  (1914)  voices  the  left- 
wing  policy  both  of  the  Trade  Unionists  and  of  the 
organized  teachers,  when  he  argues  that  general  educa- 
tion (as  opposed  to  the  technical  education  to  be  con- 
trolled by  the  Trade  Guilds)  "might  be  best  assured  by 
the  state  charging  the  National  Union  of  Teachers  with 

of  the  larger  local  education  authorities  negotiated  with  the  teachers  on 
salaries  through  Whitley  Councils,  half  of  which  consisted  of  representa- 
tives of  teachers. 

12  See  the  admirable   "special  supplements"   of  the  New  Statesman 
(September  25  and  October  2,  1915)  on  English  Teachers  and  their  Pro- 
fessional Organization,  Chap.  Ill,  p.  15. 

13  New  Statesman  (April  3,  1920).    In  1920  a  motion  in  similar  words 
was  put  on  the  conference  agenda  by  the  N.U.T.  executive,  but  was 
withdrawn,  apparently  for  tactical  reasons,  after  a  motion  hi  favor  of 
Whitley   Councils    (composed  of   representatives   of  teachers  and  their 
employers)   had  been  carried  (see  the  debate,  reported  in  The  School- 
master of  April  10,  1920). 

143 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

the  powers  necessary  and  the  consequent  responsibility 
to  society  for  carrying  it  out"  (p.  268). 

Anyone  who  has  been,  as  I  have  been,  a  professional 
teacher  in  England  for  forty  years,  or  who  has  studied 
the  position  of  English  teachers  for  the  last  century,  must 
recognize  the  enormous  benefits  which  the  teachers  and 
the  community  have  gained  from  the  recent  growth  of 
professional  organization.  The  private  school  "usher," 
clinging  to  the  rags  of  his  gentility  with  the  wages  and 
independence  of  a  footman,  has  a  chance  of  becom- 
ing a  man  when  he  joins  the  Association  of  Assistant 
Masters;  the  sweated  schoolmistresses  have  successfully 
claimed  the  wages  of  a  skilled  occupation;  some  "public 
school"  masters  have  been  drawn  out  of  their  atmosphere 
of  elderly  boyhood;  the  whole  profession  has  gained  in 
intellectual  independence,  as  against  clerical  "managers," 
capitalist  governors,  and  the  politicians  on  the  local  edu- 
cation authority.  But  the  vocational  organization  of 
teachers  brings  with  it  the  same  dangers  as  the  organiza- 
tion of  other  vocations.  The  majority  of  an  organized 
body  is  apt  to  be  hostile  to  any  change  which  involves 
the  effort  of  rehabituation.  Teachers,  like  bricklayers, 
cling  with  passionate  loyalty  to  their  existing  methods  of 
work;  they  personify  the  subjects  or  groups  of  subjects 
which  they  teach  and  the  institutions  in  which  they  teach, 
and  stimulate  with  regard  to  them  their  primitive  instincts 
of  corporate  defense.14 

14  The  President  of  St.  John's  College,  Oxford,  speaking  to  the  Con- 
gregation of  Oxford  teachers  during  the  debate  on  compulsory  Greek  in 
1910,  appealed  successfully  to  the  sympathy  of  his  fellow  professionals 
on  the  ground  that  "Science,  like  the  cuckoo,  was  trying  to  oust  from  the 
common  nest  subjects  which  had  a  longer  prescriptive  right  to  it  than 
herself"  (Oxford  Magazine,  December  i,  1920). 

144 


PROFESSIONALISM 

Every  new  scientific  discovery,  every  new  movement 
of  human  thought,  every  change  in  the  relation  between 
states  or  races  or  classes,  brings  with  it  the  need  of  a  new 
distribution  of  the  time  and  effort  of  teaching  and  learn- 
ing. If  mankind  are  to  maintain  and  improve  their  social 
heritage,  the  community  must  always  be  on  the  watch  to 
discover  gaps  in  its  educational  system.15  The  provision 
of  teaching  in  new  subjects  must  be  accompanied  by  a 
constant  process  of  re-division  and  re-integration  of  labor. 
Modern  philosophy,  for  instance,  will  remain  sterile  un- 
less it  is  brought  into  relation  with  modern  history,  logic 
unless  it  becomes  conscious  of  mathematics,  biology  un- 
less it  learns  from  psychology  to  watch  behavior  as  well 
as  structure — just  as  chemistry  remained  unprogressive 
in  the  second  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  until  it  came 
into  contact  with  physics.  The  philistinism  of  English 
legal  training  will  not  be  diminished  until  law  comes  into 
contact  with  history  and  psychology. 

But  in  those  English  universities  where  no  educational 
change  can  take  place  except  on  the  initiation  of  the 
majority  of  a  body  of  professional  teachers,  the  introduc- 
tion of  new  subjects  or  the  regrouping  of  old  subjects  is 

16  It  is  argued  that  the  supply  of  teaching  of  any  subject  must  depend 
on  the  supply  of  thoroughly  trained  teachers;  and  that  it  is  better  to 
teach  a  less  urgently  needed  subject  quite  thoroughly  than  a  more  ur- 
gently needed  subject  less  thoroughly.  But,  even  from  the  point  of  view 
of  efficient  instruction,  the  sense  that  a  particular  piece  of  thought  or 
knowledge  is  urgently  needed  is  an  invaluable  stimulus  both  to  teacher 
and  taught.  Thoroughness  exists  for  man,  not  man  for  thoroughness; 
and,  if  no  other  teaching  of  American  history  is  available,  an  able  young 
lecturer  in  England  may  do  better  work  by  guiding  his  class  with  frank 
humility  through  a  good  American  text-book  than  by  communicating 
the  latest  results  of  his  own  researches  into  thrice-conned  fourteenth-cen- 
tury documents  in  the  British  Record  Office. 

145 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

steadily  opposed  and  only  with  difficulty  achieved.  No 
undergraduate,  for  instance,  at  Oxford  may,  as  I  write, 
offer  as  part  of  a  single  Honors  degree  course  either 
philosophy  or  psychology  without  a  serious  amount  of 
Greek  and  Latin  philology:  he  may  not  offer  philosophy 
or  psychology  either  with  modern  history  or  without 
ancient  history:  he  may  not  combine  in  one  course  math- 
ematics and  logic,  or  modern  history  and  a  modern  lan- 
guage, or  history  and  geography,  or  biology  and  psychol- 
ogy. It  is  only  because  a  Royal  Commission  on  the  older 
universities  is  actually  sitting  that  there  is  any  chance  of 
defeating  this  kind  of  professional  conservatism.  In  the 
newer  universities  less  harm,  but  very  real  harm,  is  done 
by  the  maintenance  of  a  meaningless  distinction  between 
"Arts"  and  "Science";  I  remember  that  a  very  able  mem- 
ber of  the  London  University  Senate  argued  in  my  hear- 
ing against  a  proposal  to  allow  a  man  who  had  taken 
medical  and  law  degrees  to  proceed  to  a  doctorate  in 
letters  with  a  treatise  on  the  philosophy  of  punishment; 
he  told  us  that  such  a  proceeding  would  break  down  the 
"natural"  divisions  between  subjects.  It  is  not  necessary 
to  introduce  the  extreme  liberty  of  combination  existing 
in  some  American  universities;  but  a  rational  and  coher- 
ent analysis  and  reconstruction  of  university  courses 
would,  I  believe,  add  10  per  cent  to  the  efficiency  of  uni- 
versity instruction  in  London,  and  perhaps  30  per  cent 
in  Oxford  and  Cambridge.  No  expense  or  disadvantage 
of  any  kind  would  result,  except  a  momentarily  uncom- 
fortable change  of  habit  on  the  part  of  a  few  teachers 
and  perhaps  a  diminution  of  a  few  vested  pecuniary  in- 
terests, compensated  for  by  the  aggrandizement  of  a  few 
others. 

146 


PROFESSIONALISM 

Educational  professionalism  strengthens,  and  is  strength- 
ened by,  educational  "institutionalism,"  the  school  or  col- 
lege "patriotism"  which  conceives  of  an  institution  as 
having,  like  a  "subject,"  rights  against  the  individual  stu- 
dent or  the  nation  as  a  whole.  This  institutionalism  is 
in  England  and  America  intensified  by  the  deliberate 
stimulation  of  competitive  passion  in  games.  It  has 
happened  to  me  on  several  occasions  to  suggest  that  a 
clever  "public  school"  boy  who  has  won  a  university 
scholarship  in  the  December  term,  should  leave  school 
and  work  under  new  conditions  before  he  goes  to  Oxford 
or  Cambridge  in  the  following  October.  His  parents, 
when  they  passed  on  my  suggestion,  were  in  each  case 
reproached  by  the  Headmaster  for  disloyalty  to  the  school 
as  an  institution. 

Now  that  railways  have  been  invented,  there  is  nothing 
to  prevent  a  successful  university  teacher  or  a  willing  stu- 
dent from  teaching  or  learning  during  a  single  year  or 
week  in  more  than  one  English  university  town.  The 
fact  that  an  English  university  had  specialized  with  suc- 
cess in  the  study  of  Chinese  literature  or  higher  optics 
would  then  be  a  reason  why  other  universities  should 
send  students  to  it  rather  than  themselves  start  rival  and 
less  efficient  courses.  There  might  even  be  a  conscious  and 
deliberate  allocation  of  subjects  for  student  research. 
Among  those  English  universities  where  post-graduate 
work  is  encouraged  there  may  now  at  any  one  time  be 
four  or  five  students  preparing  theses  on  some  one  subject 
of  research  while  fifty  kindred  and  equally  important 
subjects  remain  untouched.  If  once  our  university  sys- 
tem could  take  the  great  step  which  is  represented  in  bio- 
logical evolution  by  the  transition  from  the  single-celled 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

protozoon  to  the  many-celled  metazoon,  it  would  be  pos- 
sible to  establish  a  general  clearing-house  of  subjects 
and  suggested  subjects  of  research.  But  all  such  changes 
would  be  opposed  by  the  traditions  of  English  educational 
institutionalism. 

Teachers,  again,  like  the  members  of  other  professions, 
tend  to  think  of  their  work  as  an  isolated  process  co- 
extensive with  their  profession.  But  the  function  of 
teaching  cannot  be  confined  to  professional  teachers; 
civilization,  although  it  is  dependent  on  the  economically 
organized  work  of  the  "qualified"  teacher,  is  also  depend- 
ent on  the  fact  that  the  whole  race  are  and  must  be  "un- 
qualified" teachers.  We  could  not  continue  to  exist  in 
our  present  numbers,  unless  mothers  taught  their  babies 
from  the  moment  of  birth,  unless  brothers  and  sisters,  and 
husbands  and  wives,  and  neighbors  and  friends  taught 
each  other.  Every  employer  and  foreman,  every  house- 
keeping woman,  every  writer,  thinker,  artist,  preacher, 
politician,  doctor,  and  policeman  spends  much  of  his  time 
in  teaching.  In  newspaper  offices,  theatres,  cinemas,  de- 
bating societies,  government  departments,  churches  and 
chapels,  libraries,  ships,  barracks,  and  factories  much 
more  effective  intellectual  stimulus  and  instruction  may 
at  any  moment  be  going  on  than  in  the  brick  and  stone 
buildings  which  are  called  schools  and  colleges.  The  de- 
cisive point  in  the  education  of  boys  and  girls  may  come 
when  they  are  neglecting  the  school  lessons  to  argue  with 
a  friend,  or  read  a  book,  or  when  an  elder,  who  never 
dreamed  of  himself  as  a  teacher,  drops  in  their  mind  a 
shattering  criticism  of  some  accepted  convention. 

In  the  debate  at  the  1920  Conference  of  the  National 
Union  of  Teachers  on  "Professional  Self-Government," 

148 


PROFESSIONALISM 

Mr.  Hill,  who  seconded,  said,  "They  were  under  external 
control  from  the  beginning  to  the  end;  they  were  a  sub- 
ject profession.  .  .  .  The  right  of  the  doctors  to  practise 
depended  upon  their  own  professional  compatriots;  they 
did  not  depend  upon  an  external  authority";  and  Mr. 
Cove  (of  the  Executive)  who  moved,  said,  "Did  they 
want  the  power  to  give  advice?  No,  they  wanted  the 
power  to  construct.  .  .  .  They  wanted  the  right  to  ap- 
point their  leaders,  their  inspectors,  and  their  directors. 
.  .  .  The  doctors  and  lawyers  had  self-government,  and 
what  they  had  got  the  school  teachers  surely  ought  to 
get."18  But  the  teaching  profession,  if  it  is  to  carry  out 
efficiently  its  work  of  handing  down  its  share  of  our  social 
heritage,  must  always  like  other  professions  be  a  "sub- 
ject profession,"  if  it  is  to  do  its  work  efficiently.  The 
knowledge,  for  instance,  which  the  teacher  hands  down 
is  in  the  main  created  by  non-teachers.  When,  twenty 
years  ago,  I  was  chairman  of  the  School  Management 
Committee  of  the  London  School  Board,  and  was  talk- 
ing, perhaps  rather  complacently,  of  my  duties,  a  careful 
young  writer  of  English  prose  said  to  me,  "You  people 
are  spreading  the  butter  which  we  make."  The  teacher 
spreads  the  butter  which  the  scientist,  the  explorer,  the 
poet,  and  the  historian  make,  even  if  he  finds  time  to 
make  a  little  butter  himself.  The  daily  classroom  lessons, 
again,  of  the  teacher  cannot  take  place  without  the  active 
cooperation  of  many  who  are  not  teachers,  scholars  and 
their  parents,  tax-payers  and  tax-collectors;  and  that  co- 
operation will  not  be  efficient  unless  those  who  are  con- 
cerned are  given  a  voice  in  the  common  work. 

All  these  problems  are  very  similar  to  those  found  in 

18  The  Schoolmaster  (April  10,  1920). 

149 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

other  professions.  But  there  are  certain  respects  in 
which  the  psychology  of  the  teaching  profession  is  pecul- 
iar. Mankind,  like  some  birds,  and  some  non-human 
mammalian  species  in  which  social  inheritance  is  impor- 
tant,17 have  a  specific  teaching  instinct.  That  instinct  can 
be  observed  in  many  "born"  male  teachers,  and  in  a  rather 
larger  proportion  of  women  teachers,  and  particularly  of 
women  who,  at  the  age  of  early  motherhood,  are  teaching 
very  young  children.  But  the  teaching  instinct  was 
evolved  under  conditions  where  men  and  women  taught 
during  only  part  of  their  lives.  The  professional  teacher 
now  teaches  every  day;  he  forms,  indeed,  the  habit  of 
teaching;  but  habit,  when  it  overrides  nature,  produces 
severe  nervous  reaction;  all  regular  work,  as  I  have  al- 
ready said,18  is  unnatural  to  us,  but  regular  teaching 
produces  a  kind  of  disgust  which  is  deeper  than  that 
produced  by  any  other  kind  of  work.  Habituation  is 
easier  for  the  teacher,  and  his  ultimate  disgust  is  more 
profound,  because  he  is  dealing  with  a  quickly  changing 
series  of  immature  minds.  After  every  year,  or  at  most 
every  three  years,  he  begins  with  a  new  class,  and  tends 
to  repeat  his  most  successful  sayings,  and  to  emphasize, 
without  the  sense  of  humor  and  proportion  which  comes 
from  adult  criticism,  his  pet  ideas.  When  the  mediaeval 
Italian  laity  turned  the  word  "pedagogue"  into  "pedant," 
the  word  and  its  meaning  was  understood  and  adopted 
from  one  end  of  Europe  to  the  other.  The  teacher,  again, 
largely  depends  for  the  maintenance  of  discipline  on  the 
relationship  of  his  own  "leadership"  instinct  to  the  "fol- 
lowing" instinct  of  his  pupils.  But  the  leadership  and 

17  See  Chap.  I,  p.  18. 

18  See  Chap.  II,  p.  27. 

150 


PROFESSIONALISM 

following  instincts  are  also  intermittent,  and  the  teacher 
who  tries  to  use  them  continuously  is  apt  to  harden  into 
a  bully.  In  spite,  therefore,  of  the  technical  advantages 
of  long  experience,  most  men  and  women  are  better 
teachers  from  twenty  to  forty  than  they  are  from  forty 
to  sixty.19 

It  is  this  special  factor  in  the  problem  which  makes 
the  organization  of  the  teaching  profession  the  most  in- 
teresting as  well  as  the  most  important  field  for  that  effort 
of  invention  which  is  necessary  if  we  are  to  coordinate 
our  need  for  national  cooperation  with  our  need  for  zest 
in  our  individual  lives.  Teaching  and  learning  are  neces- 
sary for  the  continuance  of  human  existence;  but  because 
a  certain  quantity  of  teaching  and  learning  are  delightful 
to  most  human  beings,  and  because  a  much  larger  quan- 

19  In  a  modern  educational  system  the  psychological  effects  of  contin- 
uous teaching  are  in  part  disguised  by  the  fact  that  a  large  percentage  of 
the  more  ambitious  and  articulate  teachers  become  Head  Masters  or  Mis- 
tresses at  about  the  age  of  forty,  and  are  transferred  from  work  which 
is  mainly  teaching  to  work  which  is  mainly  organizing.  The  nervous 
deterioration  of  many  life-long  assistant  teachers  is  apt  to  be  explained 
as  due  to  their  disappointment  at  failing  to  gain  headships.  For  the 
pathological  psychology  of  the  assistant  master  see  the  novel  Mr.  Perrin 
and  Mr.  Traill  (Hugh  Walpole).  American  readers  will  notice  that  I 
speak  of  the  teacher  as  "he."  Elementary  teaching  in  England  is  still  to 
a  considerable  extent  a  male  profession;  secondary,  higher,  and  technical 
teachers  are  with  us  preponderatingly  male,  and  my  own  personal  ex- 
perience has  been  mainly  with  male  teachers.  I  have  had  no  opportu- 
nities of  watching  the  psychology  of  a  body  of  teachers  preponderatingly, 
as  in  America,  female,  unmarried,  organized  professionally,  and  politi- 
cally enfranchised.  I  gather  that  their  nervous  reaction  against  their 
work  is  not  quite  so  profound  as  that  found  among  a  body  of  middle- 
aged  male  assistant  teachers,  and  that  it  does  not  occur  quite  so  early 
in  life,  but  that  in  other  respects  the  dangers  I  have  referred  to  above 
do  show  themselves  among  them. 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

tity  leads  to  the  teacher  becoming  bored  and  soured,  and 
the  scholar  being  "fed  up,"  we  must  be  always  on  the 
lookout  to  diminish  the  amount  of  teaching  which  is  re- 
quired for  a  given  amount  of  education.  Large-scale 
government  has,  since  the  days  when  slave-scribes  piled 
up  their  stacks  of  clay  tablets  at  Babylon  or  Cnossus, 
depended  on  the  production  and  preservation  of  copies 
of  administrative  documents.  The  dreary  process  of 
copying  dominated  the  atmosphere  of  the  British  Ex- 
chequer in  the  fourteenth  century,  and  destroyed  the 
morale  and  happiness  of  hundreds  of  "Vacher's  clerks" 
in  the  Whitehall  departments  of  the  mid-nineteenth  cen- 
tury.20 The  invention  of  the  copying  press  and  the  type- 
writing machine  has  already  diminished  this  labor  to  a 
fraction  of  what  it  was,  and  a  little  ingenuity  in  the  use 
of  photography  would  diminish  it  so  much  more,  that  a 
share  of  it  may  be  a  not  unpleasant  incident  in  an  official's 
life.  In  the  same  way  we  may  be  able  by  the  use  of 
study-libraries,  laboratories,  school  journeys,  and  a  hun- 
dred other  expedients,  to  reduce  our  present  burden  both 
of  daily  teaching  and  of  daily  learning.  The  burden  that 
remains  should  be  so  distributed  as  to  cause  the  minimum 
of  weariness,  and  the  maximum  of  zest  in  teaching. 
Some  people  can  enjoy  teaching  all  their  lives;  but  it 
should  be  no  more  necessary  that  anyone  should  be  a  life- 
long teacher  for  all  the  hours  of  every  working-day  than 

20  See  the  experiences  of  Hoccleve  (contemporary  of  Chaucer)  in  T.  F. 
Tout,  The  English  Civil  Service  in  the  Fourteenth  Century  (1916),  pp. 
30,  31.  "After  twenty-three  years  of  such  work  Hoccleve's  whole  body 
was  smarting  with  aches  and  pains,  and  his  eyesight  was  utterly  ruined." 
For  the  type  to  which  "Vacher's  clerks"  belonged,  see  Dickens'  account 
of  the  man  whose  death  starts  the  tragedy  of  Bleak  House. 

152 


PROFESSIONALISM 

that  he  should  be  a  life-long  copyist,  or  a  life-long  soldier. 
We  should  contrive  means  to  allow  the  teacher  to  alter- 
nate teaching  with  research,  or  with  literary  production, 
or  with  any  form  of  work  which  will  give  his  instincts  of 
teaching  and  discipline  a  rest.  It  is  fortunate  that  the 
process  of  being  taught,  itself  gives  nervous  relief  when 
exchanged  for  that  of  teaching.  One  realizes  one  of  the 
causes  which  lent  zest  to  mediaeval  university  life,  when 
one  reads  Chaucer's  description  of  the  Clerk  of  Oxen- 
ford,  "and  gladly  would  he  lerne  and  gladly  teche." 

Educational  authorities,  at  present,  with  the  support  of 
the  teachers'  organizations,  generally  dismiss  girl-teachers 
on  marriage.  They  ought  to  welcome  the  opportunity 
of  "seconding"  them  for  motherhood,  and  receiving  them 
back,  not  only  with  wider  experience  but  with  renewed  zest 
for  their  work.  All  classes  of  teachers,  again,  are  now  being 
brought  under  state  superannuation  schemes,  and  that  fact, 
useful  as  it  is  in  lessening  the  insecurity  of  the  teacher's 
life,  is  already  making  it  more  difficult  for  a  teacher 
who  desires  to  leave  his  profession  to  do  so  without  serious 
loss,  or  for  an  outsider  who  feels  a  genuine  desire  to 
teach  to  become  a  teacher.  There  is  obviously  no  reason 
why  men  or  women,  earning  pension  rights  from  the  state 
in  different  capacities,  should  not  exchange  functions  with- 
out loss,  if  the  state  thinks  that  such  an  exchange  will  be 
useful.  When  pension  rights  are  given  both  to  Treasury 
Clerks  and  to  Professors  of  Economics,  the  Professor  of 
Economics  who  becomes  a  Treasury  Clerk,  and  the  Treas- 
ury Clerk  who  becomes  a  Professor  of  Economics,  should 
equally  carry  their  pension  rights  with  them.  And  if 
quite  ordinary  secondary  or  elementary  masters  or  mis- 
tresses find  themselves  "fed  up  with  teaching"  at  thirty- 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

five,  it  may  be  the  best  policy  for  the  community  to  allow 
them  to  carry  their  pension  rights  through  a  spell  of  pen- 
sionable work,  as  clerks,  or  as  minor  superintending 
officials,  and  perhaps  to  return  to  teaching  if  they  recover 
their  zest  for  that.  An  administrator  or  scientist  who  is 
teaching  "part-time,"  should  be  proportionately  pension- 
able both  for  that  time  and  for  any  pensionable  work  done 
during  the  remainder  of  the  day,  or  week,  or  year.  But 
professional  opinion  among  teachers  will  steadily  oppose 
this  policy. 

In  the  analogous  profession  of  journalism,  the  future 
of  the  intellectual  organization  of  democracy  depends  in 
large  part  on  a  free  interchange  between  the  life  of  jour- 
nalism and  the  life  of  action,  or  research,  or  creative 
literature.  But  the  professional  policy  of  the  National 
Union  of  Journalists  is  steadily  opposed  to  a  free  inter- 
change between  journalism  and  any  other  form  of  intel- 
lectual work.  In  January,  1920,  a  series  of  letters  ap- 
peared in  the  Westminster  Gazette  from  members  of  the 
National  Union  of  Journalists,  protesting  against  Labor 
M.P.'s  being  allowed  to  earn  salaries  as  journalists.  The 
writers  said,  "the  National  Union  of  Journalists  has 
adopted  as  a  plank  in  its  platform  the  principle  of  jour- 
nalism for  journalists  .  .  .  doctors  and  lawyers  have 
statutory  protection,  but  the  body  politic  of  journalism 
is  open  to  attack  by  any  dabbler  or  amateur  who  thinks 
he  can  write.  .  .  .  It  is  a  matter  between  trade  unionist 
and  trade  unionist.  .  .  .  Nearly  all  the  Labor  M.P.'s  are 
writing  newspaper  articles  now.  When  we  have  a  Labor 
Government  are  they  going  to  continue?  As  to  any  man 
'doing  two  jobs,'  to  which  you  say  you  have  no  objection, 
may  I  recall,  from  memory,  Mr.  Smillie's  definition  of  a 

i54 


PROFESSIONALISM 

blackleg  ...  it  was  a  man  who  took  on  another  man's 
job."21 

Any  attempt  to  adapt  the  organization  of  the  teachers 
to  the  special  characteristics  of  the  teaching  instinct  will, 
of  course,  involve  an  examination  of  the  system  of  train- 
ing teachers.  All  organized  vocations  have  for  many  cen- 
turies used  training,  not  only  as  a  means  of  creating  skill, 
but  also  as  a  means  of  restricting  access  to  their  vocation; 
and  professional  policy  among  teachers  will  always  insist 
upon  the  longer,  the  severer,  and  the  more  technical,  of 
any  alternative  training  schemes.  But  it  is  clearly  to  the 
interest  of  the  community  that  the  art  of  teaching,  and 
the  psychological  and  other  knowledge  necessary  for  that 
art,  should  be  obtained  as  rapidly  as  possible  by  those  who 
desire  to  teach,  and  that  training  should  always  be  open 
to  men  and  women  of  any  age  who  are  otherwise  fitted  for 
the  work.22  It  will  be  objected  that  to  make  the  teaching 
profession  one  that  is  easily  entered  and  easily  left  in- 
volves the  destruction  of  any  possibility  of  that  profes- 
sional organization  whose  advantages  I  have  already 
urged;  but  I  myself  believe  that  there  is  nothing  in  this 
objection  which  cannot  be  overcome  by  an  effort  of  in- 
vention. If  ever  it  were  felt  to  be  desirable  that  soldiers 

21  Letters  in  Westminster  Gazette  (January  14  and  January  17,  1920). 
It  is  interesting  to  note  the  way  in  which  the  fact  that  the  nation  tol- 
erates the  existing  indefensible  privileges  of  the  legal  profession  leads  so 
many  other  professions  to  claim  the  same  privileges. 

22  The  great  Teachers'  College  in  connection  with  Columbia  Univer- 
sity, New  York,  is  an  admirable  instance  of  the  way  in  which  the  stimu- 
lus of  contact  with  new  pedagogic  knowledge  and  methods  can  be  given 
to  teachers  of  all  ages.    Such  an  institution  might  also  be  open  to  those 
non-teachers  who,  having  the  necessary  knowledge  of  some  subject,  desire 
rapidly  to  acquire  skill  in  imparting  it. 

155 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

on  service  should  freely  elect  committees  to  represent 
their  opinions  and  interests,  there  is  no  reason  why  all  who 
were  in  fact  serving  at  any  moment,  whether  life-long 
professionals  or  temporary  volunteers  or  conscripts, 
should  not  vote  for  those  committees. 

But  the  peculiarities  of  the  work  of  teaching,  and  the 
fact  that  in  modern  industrial  communities  almost  all 
teaching  is  paid  for  from  taxes  or  endowments,  makes  it 
desirable  that  the  part  played  in  the  control  of  their  work 
by  the  teaching  profession  should  be  somewhat  different 
from  that  played  by  other  professional  organizations. 
From  the  point  of  view  of  the  community,  the  first  object 
to  be  secured  by  the  organization  of  teachers  should  be 
that  every  teacher  should  have  sufficient  scope  for  his 
positive  teaching  instinct.  The  teacher's  work  will  turn 
into  mechanical  routine,  and  lose  its  power  of  stimulating 
his  scholars,  unless  the  teacher  retains  self-respect  and 
a  due  degree  of  intellectual  liberty.  This  is  best  secured 
by  the  influence  on  national,  local,  and  institutional  edu- 
cational administration  of  freely  elected  representatives 
of  the  teachers  concerned;  and  such  a  representation 
would  also  be  a  fertile  source  of  educational  invention  and 
initiative.  But  neither  the  individual  teacher  nor  any 
body  of  professional  representatives  should  have  a  final 
voice  in  the  choice  of  the  subjects  to  be  taught  to  any 
scholar.  In  that  decision  the  scholar  himself  (acting 
either  by  a  system  of  individual  options  or  through  elected 
representatives)  and  his  parents,  as  well  as  the  repre- 
sentatives of  the  community,  should  have  a  voice.  Repre- 
sentatives of  the  community  should  be  given,  subject  in 
some  cases  to  an  advisory  voice  from  the  teachers,  the 
decisive  voice  in  the  choice  of  teachers,  the  allocation  of 

156 


PROFESSIONALISM 

public  funds  to  various  sections  of  education,  and  general 
administrative  arrangements. 

How  should  these  "representatives  of  the  community" 
be  constituted?  In  the  older  British  and  American  uni- 
versities they  are  largely  constituted  by  the  mass-vote  or 
elective  vote  of  the  graduates  of  the  institution  concerned 
— the  alumni  as  they  are  called  in  America.  That  ex- 
pedient was  devised  from  the  mass-meetings  of  resident 
teachers  in  the  mediaeval  universities,  and  has,  I  believe, 
now  ceased  to  have  any  but  bad  effects.  The  alumnus  as 
such  has  neither  the  knowledge  and  interest  of  the  teacher, 
nor  the  knowledge  and  interest  of  a  well-chosen  repre- 
sentative of  the  community.  Mr.  S.  G.  Hobson  and  Mr. 
Cole  would  apparently  desire  that  the  community  should 
for  that  purpose  be  represented  by  persons  responsible  to 
a  congress  of  Guilds.  As  things  now  are  in  England  I 
myself  should  prefer  that  it  should  be  represented  by  per- 
sons elected,  as  the  present  local  authorities  are,  by  some 
system  of  national  or  local  democracy,  and  officials  re- 
sponsible to  such  persons.  I  should  expect  to  find  such 
democratically  appointed  bodies  and  officials  more  patient 
and  more  careful  of  the  future  intellectual  interests  of  the 
nation  than  a  congress  of  all  sorts  of  Guilds.  Democratic 
bodies  can,  it  is  true,  become  narrow  and  corrupt;  but 
so,  on  the  evidence  of  mediaeval  history,  can  congresses  of 
Guilds. 


i57 


CHAPTER  VII 
LIBERTY 


THE  political  part  of  our  social  heritage  normally 
reaches  us  in  the  form  of  large  vague  words 
which  are  used  for  the  names  of  political  parties, 
or  as  rallying-cries  during  an  election.  A  boy  finds  as  he 
grows  up  that  he  is  a  Liberal,  or  a  Conservative,  or  a 
Democrat,  or  a  Socialist,  or  that  he  "believes  in"  Liberty, 
or  Equality,  or  Patriotism.  Behind  these  words  there 
may  be  preferences  for  certain  political  expedients,  con- 
ceptions of  the  men  and  things  outside  the  range  of  our 
senses,  generalizations  as  to  human  psychology,  or  the 
acceptance  of  certain  rules  of  conduct.  When  a  man  calls 
himself  a  Democrat,  he  is  probably  more  or  less  conscious 
of  several  of  those  "meanings"  of  the  term;  but  he  may 
chiefly  "mean"  Democracy  as  a  form  of  government,  or 
as  a  way  of  thinking  and  feeling  about  his  fellow-citizens, 
or  as  a  belief  about  human  nature,  or  as  a  rule  of  politi- 
cal conduct. 

So  far,  in  analyzing  political  terms,  I  have  dealt  mainly 
with  institutions — committee-organization,  parliamentary 
or  professional  government,  etc.  But  it  is  convenient  to 

158 


LIBERTY 

analyze  certain  political  terms  as  "principles"  and  rules 
of  conduct.  Of  these  "principles"  the  most  important 
historically  is  Liberty  or  Freedom.  Liberty,  as  a  diction- 
ary word,  means  a  condition  in  which  human  impulses 
are  not  obstructed;  and  as  a  rule  of  political  conduct  the 
doctrine  that  such  obstruction  should  not  take  place.  The 
psychological  facts,  therefore,  on  which  the  usefulness  of 
the  principle  of  Liberty  depends  consist  of  the  results 
which  follow  from  the  obstruction  of  human  impulses. 
Obstruction  in  a  modern  society  does  not,  of  course,  al- 
ways, or  generally,  mean  the  physical  impossibility  of 
satisfaction ;  I  use  it  here  as  a  quantitative  term,  meaning 
such  a  degree  of  interference  as  in  fact  prevents  a  man 
from  acting  on  any  particular  impulse  at  any  particular 
moment.  The  results  of  obstruction  may  be  divided  into 
immediate  psychological  reactions,  such  as  anger  or  hu- 
miliation; and  more  permanent  effects,  such  as  changes 
of  a  man's  character  by  the  strengthening  of  some  im- 
pulses and  the  weakening  of  others. 

The  most  important  fact  about  our  immediate  reaction 
to  the  obstruction  of  our  impulses  is  that  the  reaction  de- 
pends more  on  the  nature  of  the  obstructing  cause  or 
agent,  than  on  the  nature  of  the  obstruction.  This  fact 
is  not  as  a  rule  indicated  in  the  definitions  of  Liberty 
given  in  books  on  politics.  Mr.  Sidney  Webb,  for  in- 
stance, defines  personal  liberty  as  "the  practical  opportu- 
nity that  we  have  of  exercising  our  faculties  and  fulfill- 
ing our  desires."1  Mr.  Webb's  use  of  the  word  is  for 
many  non-political  purposes  both  legitimate  and  con- 
venient. When  a  man  says,  "I  shall  be  at  liberty  to  see 
you  next  Thursday"  one  does  not  need  to  enquire  whether 

1  Webb,  Towards  Social  Democracy  (1916),  p.  7. 

159 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

it  is  a  person  or  a  thing  which  prevents  him  from  seeing 
you  earlier.  But  this  use  does  not  help  to  explain  the 
enormous  force  of  Liberty  as  a  political  principle.  Com- 
mon usage  refuses  to  say  that  the  liberty  of  a  Syrian 
peasant  is  equally  violated  if  half  his  crops  are  destroyed 
by  hail  or  locusts,  half  his  income  is  taken  by  a  Turkish 
tax-gatherer,  or  half  his  working  hours  are  taken  for  road- 
construction  by  a  German  or  French  commander;  because 
human  obstruction  of  our  impulses  produces  in  us,  under 
certain  conditions,  reactions  which  are  not  produced  by 
obstruction  due  to  non-human  events.  The  reactions  to 
human  obstruction  take  the  form,  first  of  anger  and  an 
impulse  to  resist,  and  then,  if  resistance  is  found  to  be, 
or  felt  to  be,  useless,  of  an  exquisitely  painful  feeling  of 
unfreedom;  and  similar  reactions  do  not  follow  non-hu- 
man obstruction.  Wounded  self-respect,  helpless  hatred, 
and  thwarted  affection,  are,  that  is  to  say,  different 
psychological  states  from  hunger  and  fatigue,  though  all 
are  the  results  of  obstructions  to  the  carrying  out  of  our 
impulses.  When  Shakespeare  wishes  to  describe  the  ills 
which  drive  men  to  suicide  he  gives, 

The  oppressor's  wrong,  the  proud  man's  contumely, 
The  pangs  of  despised  love,  the  law's  delay, 
The  insolence  of  office,  and  the  spurns 
That  patient  merit  of  the  unworthy  takes, 

and  does  not  mention  the  want  of  food  and  clothing  from 
which  he  must  himself  have  suffered  during  his  first  wan- 
derings from  Stratford. 

Common  usage,  again,  does  not  treat  all  human  hin- 
drances to  our  impulses  as  being,  in  the  same  sense,  viola- 
tions of  liberty;  and  here  also  common  usage  is  based  on 

1 60 


LIBERTY 

important  psychological  facts.  The  special  feeling  of 
un  freedom  only  arises  when  the  hindrance  is  felt  to  be 
inconsistent  with  those  normal  human  relationships,  to 
which,  in  the  environment  of  primitive  society,  our  in- 
stincts correspond.  If  a  man  is  prevented,  either  by  the 
woman  herself  or  by  some  other  human  being,  from  pos- 
sessing a  woman  who  does  not  love  him,  he  does  not  feel 
unfree  in  the  same  sense  that  a  man  does  who  is  denied 
access  to  a  woman  who  loves  him,  or  from  whom  a  faith- 
ful wife  is  taken  by  force  or  fraud.  When  Ahab  tries  to 
rob  Naboth  of  the  vineyard  which  he  has  planted,  and 
Naboth  resists,  Ahab  may  fail,  or  Naboth  may  fail;  but 
the  resentment  of  Naboth — or  any  of  his  early-human  or 
anthropoid  ancestors — is  different  from  that  of  Ahab; 
Naboth  will  feel,  and  Ahab  will  not  feel,  the  "oppressor's 
wrong."  Mr.  Webb's  definition  does  not  explain  why, 
when  certain  Germans  pleaded,  on  the  strength  of  their 
text-books,  that  in  "exercising  their  faculties  and  fulfill- 
ing their  desires"  by  invading  Belgium  they  were  realizing 
their  nation's  liberty,  and  that  the  Belgians  in  defending 
themselves  were  doing  no  more,  the  world  treated  their 
plea  as  either  paradoxical  or  hypocritical.2  Even  in  the 
highly  artificial  economic  environment  of  modern  society, 
a  propertyless  workman  only  feels  "unfree"  or  "enslaved" 
when  he  believes  that  his  want  of  property  is  due  to  the 
deliberate  action  of  men  who  are  thereby  violating  the 
normal  conditions  of  human  society.  The  inhabitants  of 
a  country  where  (as  in  America  fifty  years  ago)  private 
property  in  land  or  railways  is  taken  as  a  matter  of 

2  "We  claim  only  the  free  development  of  our  individuality,  and  are 
only  fighting  against  the  attempt  to  throttle  it"  (Deutsche  Reden  in 
schwerer  Zeit,  Pastor  Troeltsch,  p.  27). 

161 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

course,  do  not  feel  unfree  if  they  are,  in  respect  of  land 
or  railways,  propertyless.  As  soon  as  they  begin  to 
ascribe  their  exclusion  from  any  particular  kind  of  prop- 
erty in  the  means  of  production  and  distribution  to  "capi- 
talism," or  "exploitation,"  or  "robbery,"  they  do  feel 
unfree;  and  the  control  of  that  kind  of  property  then  be- 
comes a  question  of  political  and  social  liberty.  But  the 
fact  that  the  same  kind  of  economic  disadvantage  may 
be  felt  at  one  time  to  be  due  to  our  normal  environment, 
and  at  another  time  to  be  due  to  the  abnormal  action  of 
our  fellow  human  beings,  does  not  mean  that  the  presence 
or  absence  of  the  feeling  of  unfreedom  is  not  important. 
The  socialist  who  argues  that  freedom  of  speech  or  re- 
ligion is  of  no  value  in  an  economically  unequal  commu- 
nity, and  the  authoritarian  who  argues  that  an  increase 
of  material  comfort  outweighs  any  degree  of  deprivation 
of  political  liberty,  both  make  the  same  psychological  mis- 
take; and  the  world  has  during  the  years  1914-1920  paid 
heavily  for  that  mistake. 

This  connection  between  the  principle  of  Liberty  and 
the  normal  course  of  human  instinctive  behavior  under 
primitive  conditions  is  especially  important  when  the  feel- 
ing that  our  liberty  has  been  infringed  arises  out  of  the 
obstruction  of  those  cooperative  instincts  which  among 
men  and  some  other  gregarious  mammals  regulate  com- 
mon decision  and  common  action.  A  man  does  not  in- 
stinctively feel  unfree  if  he  finds  himself  following  another 
in  urgent  cooperative  action  after  having  had  a  fair  chance 
of  himself  claiming  the  lead,  any  more  than  a  hunting  dog, 
who  has  vainly  called  on  the  pack  to  turn  to  the  left,  feels 
any  lasting  resentment  when  he  is  following  a  more  domi- 
nant leader  to  the  right.  Where  the  need  of  cooperative 

162 


LIBERTY 

action  is  recognized,  both  common  speech  and  psychologi- 
cal analysis  treat  the  essence  of  unfreedom  as  consisting 
in  the  denial  of  "free  speech"  and  a  fair  hearing  in  dis- 
cussion or  a  vote  in  decision.  "Patient  merit"  suffers  the 
agony  of  humiliation  if  spurned  by  "the  unworthy."  If 
the  meritorious  man  had  a  half-belief  that  the  competitor 
for  whom  he  was  rejected  was  fairly  chosen  he  would  find 
it  difficult  to  work  himself  up  even  into  a  sham-passion 
of  humiliation. 

It  must  be  remembered,  again,  that  human  beings  are 
not  a  gregarious  species  in  the  same  way,  or  to  the  same 
degree,  as  are  the  ants  or  the  bees;  our  normal  instinctive 
course  leads  to  intermittent  cooperation  for  certain  special 
needs,  and  not  to  constant  cooperation  for  all  needs.  The 
conditions  under  which  cooperative  action  takes  place 
without  creating  the  feeling  of  unfreedom  are,  therefore, 
both  qualitative  and  quantitative;  the  stimulus  must  be 
such  as  normally  to  arouse  the  instinct  of  cooperation; 
and  the  cooperation  must  not  last  so  long  as  either  to  tire 
that  instinct,  or  to  leave  other  uncooperative  instincts  too 
long  unsatisfied.  If,  owing  to  a  generally-believed  danger 
of  invasion,  the  inhabitants  of  a  democratic  community 
are  required  for  a  year  or  two  to  submit  to  a  "state  of 
siege"  they  do  not  feel  unfree.  If  they  are  required  to  do 
so,  even  by  a  majority  of  their  fellows,  when  they  do  not 
believe  that  there  is  danger  they  do  feel  unfree.  Or  if  the 
foreign  or  domestic  policy  of  their  country  is  so  managed 
that,  like  the  noble  families  in  ancient  Sparta,  or  the  ordi- 
nary inhabitants  of  pre-war  Germany,  they  always  believe 
themselves  to  be  in  danger,  and  are  always  required  to 
live  in  a  state  of  siege,  they  will  nevertheless  in  time  come 
to  feel  "fed  up"  and  unfree,  from  the  excess  of  coopera- 

163 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

tion  and  absence  of  individual  action.  Friedrich  Nau- 
mann,  in  the  early  weeks  of  the  war,  wrote  that  the  West- 
ern nations  "call  us  [the  Germans]  unfree  .  .  .  because 
they  dislike  the  habit  of  order  (Ordnung)  which  has  be- 
come a  second  nature  to  us,"  and  claimed  that  German 
Ordnung  is  freedom  because  it  results  from  the  deliberate 
and  unfettered  choice  of  the  German  people.3  Events  in 
Germany  in  1918  demonstrated  the  defects  of  this  argu- 
ment, and  showed  that  a  people  may  voluntarily  choose  a 
way  of  living  which  afterwards  produces  the  feeling  of 
unfreedom,  just  as  easily  as  a  boy  may  voluntarily  take 
a  bite  from  a  green  apple  which  afterwards  produces  the 
feeling  of  sourness.  Mr.  Lloyd  George,  speaking  at  Con- 
way  on  May  6,  1916,  said,  "Compulsion  simply  means 
that  a  nation  is  organizing  itself."  In  the  crisis  of  1916- 
1917  compulsory  military  service  was  not,  in  either  Eng- 
land or  America,  felt  by  more  than  a  small  minority  of 
the  population  to  be  a  violation  of  liberty.  When  com- 
pulsion was  proposed  for  Ireland,  to  a  people  who  thought 
that  they  had  no  voice  in  the  decision;  or  when  in  1919 
and  1920  war-restrictions  were  continued  in  America 
during  peace,  those  affected  felt  unfree. 

The  immediate  reaction- feeling  of  unfreedom  is,  there- 
fore, a  definite  psychological  state  produced  by  facts  in 
our  biological  inheritance  which  can,  by  observation  and 
experiment,  be  ascertained  and  measured  with  some  de- 
gree of  accuracy.  This  makes  it  possible  for  statesmen 
both  to  explain  the  explosive  effects  of  the  idea  of  Liberty 
(or  rather  of  the  sudden  prevalence  of  the  feeling  of  un- 
freedom) and  to  guard  against  those  effects.  But  it  does 

8  Die  Hilje  (September  24,  1914).  For  habit  as  "second  nature"  see 
my  Great  Society,  Chap.  V. 

164 


LIBERTY 

not  follow  that  a  complete  absence  of  the  feeling  of  un- 
freedom  is  either  possible  or  desirable  for  mankind.  The 
instinct  of  resentment,  though  it  came  into  existence  be- 
cause we  needed  protection  from  obstruction  to  our  nor- 
mal impulses,  is  nevertheless  now  part  of  our  nature;  and 
an  occasional  satisfaction  for  it  may  be  necessary  for  our 
normal  life  and  health.4  And  it  is  still  more  important 
to  remember  that  our  primitive  environment  is  gone,  and 
that  our  instincts  have  been  to  some  extent  modified  by 
many  thousands  of  years  of  parasitic  relation  to  our  social 
heritage.  Our  instincts  to-day  are  not  perfectly  adapted 
either  to  our  present  environment,  or,  if  it  could  be  recon- 
structed, to  our  primitive  environment.  No  way  of  living, 
therefore,  can  now  be  so  "natural"  to  us  as  never  to  in- 
volve the  obstruction  of  impulse;  the  principle  of  Liberty 
can  never  be  absolute,  and  in  the  organization  of  our  so- 
ciety, we  must  ask,  not  merely  how  we  are  to  prevent  the 
occurrence  of  the  feeling  of  unfreedom,  but  how  we  are 
to  live  the  good  life.  And  in  answering  that  question,  we 
must  consider  not  only  our  immediate  reactions  to  the 
obstruction  of  our  impulses,  but  also  the  more  permanent 
effects  of  that  obstruction  upon  our  efficiency  and  happi- 
ness. 

All  these  complex  facts  may  be  illustrated  by  the  his- 
tory of  Liberty  as  a  political  idea  in  Europe.  The  be- 
ginning of  that  history  can  be  assigned  with  unusual 
exactness  to  the  efforts  of  a  few  statesmen,  historians,  and 
philosophers  in  the  city  of  Athens  during  the  fifth  cen- 
tury B.  C.  Herodotus  describes  how  the  Athenians  in 
480  B.  C.  answered  the  offer  of  the  Persian  King's  agent 
to  make  them  the  richest  and  most  powerful  state  in 

4  See  my  Great  Society,  Chap.  IX. 

165 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

Greece,  provided  that  they  would  accept  Persian  suze- 
rainty. "We  know  as  well  as  you  do  that  the  power  of 
the  King  of  Persia  is  many  times  greater  than  ours.  .  .  . 
Nevertheless,  because  we  love  liberty,  we  shall  fight  as 
best  we  can."5  Liberty  here  means  little  more  than  ab- 
sence of  foreign  tyranny.  Fifty  years  later  Pericles  de- 
livered that  Funeral  Speech  over  the  Athenian  dead  in  the 
Peloponnesian  War  which  Thucydides  reported  and  dram- 
atized, and  extracts  from  which  were  pasted  on  the  win- 
dows of  the  London  omnibuses  in  1915.  Pericles  tells  his 
hearers,  some  of  whom  must  have  fought  at  Salamis,  that 
"the  secret  of  happiness  is  Liberty,  and  the  secret  of 
Liberty  is  courage."  But,  to  Pericles,  Liberty  is  no  longer 
the  merely  negative  fact  of  the  absence  of  foreign  tyranny. 
It  is  a  many-sided  positive  conception,  both  of  a  type  of 
political  and  social  organization  already  in  part  realized 
in  Athens,  and  of  the  conscious  moral  and  intellectual 
efforts  which  alone  could  make  the  continued  existence 
of  that  type  possible.  "As  we  manage  our  public  life  in 
accordance  with  the  principle  of  Liberty,  so  we  carry  the 
same  spirit  into  our  daily  relations  with  each  other.  .  .  . 
Our  constitution  is  named  a  democracy,  because  it  is  in 
the  hands  not  of  the  few  but  of  the  many.  But  our  laws 
secure  equal  justice  for  all  in  their  private  disputes,  and 
our  public  opinion  welcomes  and  honors  talent  in  every 
branch  of  achievement,  not  for  any  partisan  reason  but  on 
grounds  of  excellence  alone.  .  .  .  We  have  no  black 
looks  or  angry  words  for  our  neighbor  if  he  does  any- 
thing merely  because  he  finds  pleasure  in  it,  and  we  ab- 
stain from  the  petty  acts  of  churlishness  which,  though 
they  do  no  actual  harm,  yet  cause  annoyance  to  those 

8  Herodotus,  VIII,  143. 

1 66 


LIBERTY 

who  note  them.  Open  and  friendly  in  our  private  inter- 
course, in  our  public  acts  we  keep  strictly  within  the  con- 
trol of  law.  We  acknowledge  the  restraint  of  reverence; 
we  are  obedient  to  whosoever  is  set  in  authority,  and  to 
the  laws,  more  especially  to  those  which  offer  protection 
to  the  oppressed  and  those  unwritten  ordinances  whose 
transgression  brings  admitted  shame.  .  .  .  Let  us  draw 
strength  .  .  .  from  the  busy  spectacle  of  our  great  city's 
life,  .  .  .  falling  in  love  with  her  as  we  see  her,  and  re- 
membering that  she  owes  all  this  greatness  to  men  with 
the  fighter's  daring,  the  wise  man's  understanding  of  his 
duty,  and  the  good  man's  self-discipline  in  its  perform- 
ance. 

Pericles  and  Thucydides  understood  the  explosive  mine 
of  resentment  which  may  lie  beneath  the  surface  of  a 
community  that  ignores,  as  Sparta  then  did,  the  inevitable 
reaction  which  follows  petty  meddling  with  personal  life, 
or  executive  arrogance,  or  judicial  partisanship;  but  they 
realized  also  that  free  government  meant  something  more 
subtle  and  more  difficult  than  the  mere  avoidance  of  that 
reaction.  What  neither  of  them  understood  was  that  the 
slaves  of  Periclean  Athens  were  human  beings  also,  and 
that  a  time  would  come,  two  thousand  years  later,  when 

6  I  here  use,  with  a  few  verbal  changes,  my  friend  Mr.  A.  E.  Zim- 
mern's  translation  of  the  Funeral  Speech  (The  Greek  Commonwealth, 
pp.  201-205).  It  is  difficult  to  bring  out  in  English  the  psychological 
sharpness  and  even  audacity  of  the  original.  The  word,  for  instance, 
translated  "reverence"  means  frankly  "fear."  "Falling  in  love"  is  an  even 
stronger  term  in  Greek  than  in  English.  In  the  last  phrase  of  my  quo- 
tation the  Greek  present  participles  insist  on  the  continuity  of  the  moral 
effort  which  alone  can  preserve  liberty — "ever-learning  what  their  duty 
is,  and  ever-sensitive  to  shame  in  its  performance." 

I67 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

the  descendants  of  Athenian  citizens  and  Athenian  slaves 
would  together  be  called  on  to  organize  a  free  democracy. 
No  modern  thinker  has  expressed,  for  the  purposes  of 
modern  national  democracy,  a  conception  of  Liberty  ap- 
proaching in  psychological  insight  the  ideal  which  Pericles 
offered  to  the  ancient  City-state.  I  have  already  argued 
that  the  definition  of  Liberty  used  by  Mr.  Webb  is  insuffi- 
cient, because  it  does  not  recognize  that  the  un  freedom- 
reaction  depends  more  on  the  cause  of  obstruction  to  im- 
pulse than  on  the  mere  fact  of  obstruction.  J.  S.  Mill  and 
the  mid-nineteenth-century  Liberals  who  followed  him 
spoilt  their  definition  in  another  way.  Mill,  in  his  cele- 
brated essay  on  Liberty  (1859)  starts  from  the  basis,  with 
which  everyone  can  agree,  that  Liberty  means  the  due 
satisfaction  of  the  natural  impulses  of  man.  He  takes  as 
the  motto  of  his  essay  a  sentence  from  Humboldt's  book 
on  The  Sphere  and  Duties  of  Government:  "The  grand 
leading  principle,  towards  which  every  argument  unfolded 
in  these  pages  directly  converges,  is  the  absolute  and  es- 
sential importance  of  human  development  in  its  richest 
diversity."  Mill  further  emphasizes  two  important  facts 
as  to  the  satisfaction  of  human  impulse.  The  first  is  that 
the  energy  of  impulse  can  be  strengthened  by  action,  and 
can  be  weakened  by  hindrance  to  action.  He  describes 
the  men  whose  impulses  are  hindered  by  Calvinism  and 
other  forms  of  repression,  "until  by  dint  of  not  following 
their  own  nature  they  have  no  nature  to  follow;  their 
human  capacities  are  withered  and  starved;  they  become 
incapable  of  any  strong  wishes  or  native  pleasures"  (p. 
ii9).7  The  second  fact  is  that  individual  men  differ  in 
their  natural  impulses,  and  that  therefore  the  greatest 

7  I  quote  from  the  edition  of  the  Essay  in  Dent's  Everyman  Series. 

1 68 


LIBERTY 

general  satisfaction  of  impulse  in  any  community  must 
come  not  from  uniform  but  from  varied  behavior;  "Such 
are  the  differences  among  human  beings  in  their  sources 
of  pleasure  .  .  .  that  unless  there  is  a  corresponding  di- 
versity in  their  modes  of  life,  they  neither  obtain  their 
fair  share  of  happiness  nor  grow  up  to  the  mental,  moral, 
and  aesthetic  stature  of  which  their  nature  is  capable"  (p. 
125).  So  far,  Mill's  psychology  is  good.  One  needs, 
however,  to  add  to  his  insistence  on  the  value  of  energetic 
impulse  the  fact  that  in  civilized  life  energy  is  largely  de- 
pendent on  social  inheritance;  it  is  by  education,  and  by 
the  psychological  self -consciousness  which  results  from 
education,  that  civilized  man  learns  to  substitute  steady 
and  carefully  economized  effort  for  the  casual  impulses 
and  casual  inertia  of  the  savage.  The  organized  inculca- 
tion of  an  ideal  of  thoroughness  in  the  use  of  the  intellect 
may,  therefore,  enormously  increase  those  "great  energies 
guided  by  vigorous  reason,"  which  Mill  expects  to  come 
of  themselves,  if  men  will  only  let  each  other  alone.  But 
a  more  serious  omission  in  Mill's  analysis  is  that  he  ig- 
nores the  alternation  of  the  impulse  to  lead  and  the  im- 
pulse to  follow  a  lead  which  marks  the  instinctive  process 
of  cooperation.  Of  the  impulse  to  lead,  and  its  value  in 
the  field  of  social  and  intellectual  progress,  he  gives  a 
vivid  account:  "The  initiation  of  all  wise  and  noble  things 
comes,  and  must  come,  from  individuals;  generally  at  first 
from  some  one  individual"  (p.  124).  But  he  never  seems 
to  suspect  that  the  impulse  to  follow  the  lead  may  be  as 
natural  for  us  as  the  impulse  to  give  the  lead,  and  that 
scope  for  the  impulse  to  follow  may  also  produce  "great 
energies,"  and  "strong  wishes,"  and  "native  pleasures." 
Obedience  is  to  him,  as  it  was  to  Hobbes,  never  a  result 

169 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

of  natural  impulse,  but  always  a  result  of  conventional 
coercion.  Referring,  for  instance,  to  "some  early  stages 
of  society"  Mill  says:  "There  has  been  a  time  when  the 
element  of  spontaneity  and  individuality  was  in  excess, 
and  the  social  principle  had  a  hard  struggle  for  it.  The 
difficulty  then  was  to  induce  men  of  strong  bodies  or 
minds  to  pay  obedience  to  any  rules  which  required  them 
to  control  their  impulses"  (pp.  118-119).  Here  "individ- 
uality" is  an  "impulse,"  and  the  "social  principle"  is  not. 
A  still  weaker  part  of  Mill's  essay  is  his  transition  from 
psychological  analysis  to  practical  advice.  Professor 
Dicey  (who  was  twenty-four  years  old  when  Mill  on 
Liberty  was  published)  says  that  it  "appeared  to  thou- 
sands of  admiring  disciples  to  ...  establish  on  firm 
ground  the  doctrine  that  the  protection  of  freedom  was 
the  one  great  object  of  wise  law  and  sound  policy."8  But 
the  object  of  wise  law  and  sound  policy  is  a  good  human 
life.  Liberty  is  one  of  the  conditions  of  such  a  life;  but 
the  deliberate  invention  and  organization  of  expedients 
for  making  common  action  effective  is  another  condition. 
The  medical  officer  of  health  in  a  modern  city  when  he  is 
trying  to  decrease  the  death-rate  from  influenza;  or  the 
city  engineer  when  he  is  designing  a  new  water  supply,  or 
drainage  system,  or  town-plan;  or  the  chairman  of  an 
education  committee  when  he  is  considering  a  scheme  for 
coordinating  schools  and  colleges  and  libraries;  is  not 
helped  by  Mill's  statement  that  "each  individual  is  the 
proper  guardian  of  his  own  health,  whether  bodily  or  men- 
tal and  spiritual"  (p.  75).  Nor  would  anyone,  except 
perhaps  an  American  cardinal,  now  dream  of  acting  on 
Mill's  proposal  of  a  scheme  of  compulsory  education  in 

8  Dicey,  Law  and  Public  Opinion  in  England,  p.  182. 

170 


LIBERTY 

which  the  state  pays  the  school-fees  of  the  poorer  families, 
but  leaves  the  parents  free  and  unassisted  "to  obtain  the 
education  where  and  how  they  pleased"  (p.  161). 

This  defect  in  the  connection  between  Mill's  analysis 
and  his  practical  advice  shows  itself  not  only  in  the  im- 
practicability of  his  suggestions  when  he  attempts  to  ap- 
ply his  "one  very  simple  principle  .  .  .  that  the  only  pur- 
pose for  which  power  can  be  rightfully  exercised  over 
any  member  of  a  civilized  community,  against  his  will,  is 
to  prevent  harm  to  others"  (pp.  72-73),  but  in  the  large 
and  unconsidered  exceptions  which  he  allows  to  that  prin- 
ciple. When  the  essay  appeared,  Mill  had  been  for  thirty- 
five  years  an  official  of  the  East  India  Company;  and 
it  is  with  obvious  reference  to  the  government  of  India 
that  he  says,  "we  may  leave  out  of  consideration  those 
backward  states  of  society.  .  .  .  Despotism  is  a  legitimate 
mode  of  government  in  dealing  with  barbarians.  .  .  . 
Liberty,  as  a  principle,  has  no  application  to  any  state 
of  things  anterior  to  a  time  when  mankind  have  become 
capable  of  being  improved  by  free  and  equal  discussion. 
Until  then  there  is  nothing  for  them  but  implicit  obedience 
to  an  Akbar  or  a  Charlemagne  if  they  are  so  fortunate  as 
to  find  one"  (p.  73).  He  shows  no  sympathy  with  any 
proposal  for  greater  liberty  for  "young  persons  below  the 
age  which  the  law  may  fix  as  that  of  manhood  or  woman- 
hood" (p.  73).  Even  more  significant  is  his  almost  casual 
statement  that  a  man  "may  rightfully  be  compelled  ...  to 
bear  his  fair  share  in  the  common  defense,  or  in  any  other 
joint  work  necessary  to  the  interest  of  the  society  of  which 
he  enjoys  the  protection"  (p.  74).  This  last  exception 
makes  Mill's  whole  argument  almost  meaningless.  The 
question  of  what  is  "to  the  interest"  of  a  society  depends 

171 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

on  our  preference  as  between  different  ways  of  living; 
Pericles  would  hold  one  kind  of  regulation  to  be  necessary 
to  the  interest  of  society,  the  Spartan  ephors  another  kind, 
and  Prince  Kropotkin  a  third  kind.  It  is  only  when 
Liberty  ceases  to  be  "one  very  simple  principle"  subject 
to  unexplained  exceptions,  and  is  thought  of  as  a  careful 
quantitative  and  qualitative  coordination  between  known 
psychological  facts  and  actual  social  expedients  that  any 
fertile  definition  of  it  becomes  possible. 

But  when  Mill  on  Liberty  appeared  in  1859,  the  politi- 
cal control  of  Britain  was  in  the  hands  of  the  politically 
active  members  of  the  English  middle  class,  and  they 
were  not  likely  to  notice  any  such  insufficiency  in  Mill's 
analysis.  When  an  English  Liberal  in  the  decades  be- 
tween 1850  and  1870  spoke  of  our  nation's  progress,  he 
thought  almost  exclusively  of  the  growth  of  our  material 
wealth;  the  "leaping  and  bounding"  of  our  income-tax 
returns;  and  the  scientific  discoveries  which  had  accom- 
panied that  growth  and  made  it  possible.  Both  seemed 
to  be  the  result  of  Liberty  as  Mill  conceived  it,  and  of 
Liberty  only.  Our  trade  had  been  "free"  since  1846; 
our  manufacturers  and  artisans  were  free,  subject  to  the 
mildest  of  Factory  Acts,  to  use  what  processes  and  enter 
into  what  contracts  they  liked,  and  "great  energies  guided 
by  vigorous  reason"  seemed  to  have  been  the  necessary 
result.  Scientific  discovery  had  come,  not  from  state-aid 
or  university  organization,  but  from  the  free  intellectual 
energy  of  men  like  Faraday,  or  Darwin,  or  Wallace.  Our 
free  manufacturers  had  distanced  the  world,  and  our  free 
scientists  had  made  the  seminal  inventions  of  the  time. 
The  need  for  better  technical  training  than  a  manu- 
facturer could  pick  up  in  his  business,  or  for  a  larger  in- 

172 


LIBERTY 

dustrial  unit  than  that  of  a  single  firm,  or  for  a  wider  ideal 
of  effort  than  the  individual  self-interest  of  a  manu- 
facturer, was  not  yet  felt;  nor  did  any  other  provision 
for  the  progress  of  science  seem  necessary  than  liberty  for 
the  individual  enquirer  to  think  what  he  liked,  and  say 
what  he  liked,  and  support  himself  and  his  family  as  he 
could. 

The  British  Liberals  of  that  generation  half-uncon- 
sciously  assumed  that  political  progress  would  result  in  the 
same  way  and  from  the  same  motives  as  industrial  and  sci- 
entific progress.  Hardly  any  one  of  them,  for  instance, 
seemed  to  realize  that  while  a  business  man  may  perhaps 
be  trusted  (as  long  as  the  business  organization  of  the 
world  is  not  too  complex)  to  develop  any  idea  which  "oc- 
curs" to  him,  and  be  immediately  rewarded  by  making  a 
great  fortune,  the  making  and  development  of  political  and 
administrative  inventions  required  a  concentration  of  in- 
tellectual effort  for  which  neither  the  political  ideals  nor 
the  administrative  arrangements  of  the  time  provided 
sufficient  motive  or  sufficient  means.  From  1830  to  1874 
we  were  governed  almost  continuously  by  the  Liberal 
Party,  of  which  Mill  was  the  most  important  intellectual 
leader.  But  Liberal  administration,  when  the  first  energy 
of  the  reform  struggle  of  1832  was  spent,  showed  a  curious 
combination  of  national  complacency  and  national  ineffi- 
ciency. We  declared  every  day  that  "the  schoolmaster 
was  abroad,"  and  our  educational  arrangements  remained 
the  laughing-stock  of  the  world;  we  idealized  the  British 
workman's  home  and  watched  new  slums  growing  under 
our  eyes;  we  talked  ourselves  into  a  belief  that  our  hu- 
miliating adventure  in  the  Crimea  had  covered  the  British 
flag  with  glory,  and  allowed  the  Duke  of  Cambridge  to 

i73 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

block  any  proposal  for  the  reform  of  our  army.  British 
local  government  was  then  "a  chaos  of  areas,  a  chaos  of 
authorities,  and  a  chaos  of  rates,"9  but  the  Liberal  min- 
istries after  1835  made  no  serious  attempt  to  introduce 
order  into  it,  and  indeed  increased  the  confusion  by  piece- 
meal and  inconsistent  legislation  which  set  up  new  over- 
lapping bodies  for  health  and  roads  and  education.  The 
accepted  Liberal  motto  was  "Peace,  Retrenchment  and 
Reform";  the  British  nation  was  to  secure  peace  by  leav- 
ing other  nations  and  nationalities  (with  the  help  of  Brit- 
ish example  and  British  good  advice)  to  work  out  their 
own  salvation.  Our  salvation  at  home  was  to  be  achieved 
by  a  policy  of  retrenchment,  which  would  take  as  little  of 
the  national  income  as  possible  for  state  purposes,  and 
leave  as  much  as  possible  to  be  directed  by  free  individual 
enterprise  towards  the  creation  of  individual  wealth;  and 
the  whole  policy  of  Peace  abroad  and  Retrenchment  at 
home  was  to  be  maintained  by  the  single  process  of  a 
gradual  extension  of  the  suffrage.  Democracy  would  be 
dangerous  if  it  came  at  once,  but  innocuous  if  it  came 
gradually — if  "Freedom"  were  allowed,  as  Tennyson  said, 
to  "slowly  broaden  down  from  precedent  to  precedent"; 
and  if  the  borough  and  county  franchises  should  be  low- 
ered a  pound  or  two  every  ten  years.  "All  parties,"  wrote 
Cobden  in  1859,  "now  agree  that  ...  we  must  have  a 
measure  of  parliamentary  reform  that  shall  carry  us  over 
at  least  the  next  twenty  years."10 

If  all  British  Liberals  had  really  acted  on  the  belief 
that  Liberty,  as  defined  by  Mill,  is  the  only  necessary  con- 
dition of  the  good  life  in  modern  society,  British  Liberal- 

9M.  D.  Chalmers,  Local  Government  (1883),  p.  17. 
10  Morley's  Life  of  Cobden,  p.  585. 

174 


LIBERTY 

ism  would  have  produced  the  same  helpless  maladminis- 
tration as  did  Lamartine's  French  provisional  government 
in  1848;  and  would  have  led  as  quickly  and  as  certainly 
to  an  authoritarian  reaction.  That  Liberalism  governed 
Britain  as  long  as  it  did  was  due  to  the  fact  that  there 
were  always  one  or  two  men  serving  it  who  attacked  the 
problem  of  political  organization,  not  with  the  expectation 
of  being  borne  along  by  a  self-acting  stream  of  progress, 
but  with  a  deliberate  and  constructive  intellectual  effort. 
Since  the  political  philosophy  of  the  time  was  apt  to  take 
ratiocination  for  granted,  those  who  thought  with  a  con- 
scious effort  generally  did  so  because  they  were  influenced 
rather  by  personal  example  than  by  political  or  psycho- 
logical theory.  The  most  important  of  the  nineteenth- 
century  British  political  inventors  were  disciples,  at  first 
or  second  hand,  of  Jeremy  Bentham.11  Chadwick  had 
been  Bentham's  secretary,  and  borrowed  from  his  mas- 
ter's Constitutional  Code  a  plan  for  the  structure  of  local 
and  central  government,  which  he  spoilt  in  the  borrowing, 
but  which  was  at  least  better  than  no  plan  at  all.  Gibbon 
Wakefield  and  Rowland  Hill  learnt  from  Bentham  the 
motive  and  method  which  enabled  Wakefield  to  turn  the 
British  laissez  faire  policy  of  colonial  self-government  into 
something  better  than  a  lazy  arrangement  for  "cutting  the 
painter,"  and  Rowland  Hill  how  to  invent  penny  postage. 
Francis  Place  invented,  with  a  score  of  other  political 
contrivances,  the  system  of  local  party  organization  which 
gave  a  public-spirited  voter  some  voice  in  the  selection 

11  See  Dicey,  Law  and  Public  Opinion  (1914),  pp.  130-131.  "In 
studying  Bentham's  intellectual  character  we  are  reminded  that,  if  he  was 
the  follower  of  Hobbes  and  Locke,  he  was  the  contemporary  of  Ark- 
wright  and  of  Watt.  .  .  .  It  is  in  this  inventiveness  that  he  differs  from 
and  excels  his  best  known  disciples." 

175 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

and  control  of  his  representative.  Place  was  an  intimate 
and  devoted  friend  of  Bentham,  and  he  was  reflecting  the 
tradition  of  his  master's  daily  example  when  he  wrote  in 
1838  to  Roebuck  that  the  "power  of  close,  deep,  contin- 
uous reasoning  is  the  lot  of  few,  and  those  few  have  never 
yet  directly  governed  mankind."12  Only  Mill,  Bentham's 
favorite  disciple,  and  the  intellectual  autocrat  of  British 
Liberalism,  invented,  as  far  as  I  know,  nothing  in  the 
region  of  politics.  One  seems,  indeed,  to  detect  a  certain 
softness  of  fibre,  a  certain  unwillingness  to  attempt  the 
severest  kind  of  intellectual  effort,  in  the  complacency  of 
such  passages  as  that  in  his  Logic  (1843),  "Doubtless  the 
most  effectual  way  of  showing  how  the  sciences  of  Ethics 
and  Politics  may  be  constructed  would  be  to  construct 
them:  a  task  which,  it  needs  scarcely  be  said,  I  am  not 
about  to  undertake."13 

From  the  beginning  of  the  dominance  in  British  politi- 
cal thought  of  the  conception  of  Liberty  as  the  "one  very 
simple  principle,"  there  had  always  existed  an  articulate 
opposition  to  it.  That  opposition  drew  its  intellectual 
stimulus,  to  a  degree  which  a  mere  list  of  names  and  dates 
reveals,  from  Germany.  Early  in  the  nineteenth  century 
Coleridge,  because  he  had  read  Kant,  had  given  a  philo- 
sophical content  to  the  British  conservatism  which  since 
1791  had  been  little  but  a  blind  and  selfish  dread  of  the 
principles  of  the  French  Revolution.  Coleridge  was  suc- 
ceeded by  Carlyle,  who  founded  his  attack  on  Bentham- 
ism and  Liberalism  on  Fichte;  and  Carlyle  was  succeeded 
by  Hegel's  followers,  Caird  and  Green.  By  1880  it  was 

12  Place  to   Roebuck,  January   24,   1838    (in   British   Museum   MS. 
Dept.). 

13  Logic,  Book  VI,  Chap.  I,  p.  419. 

176 


LIBERTY 

clear  that  Mill's  undisputed  reign  at  Oxford  was  over,  and 
Hegelian  idealism  almost  became  the  official  Oxford 
philosophy.  But  all  these  British  interpreters  of  Ger- 
man thought  were,  like  the  German  thinkers,  metaphysi- 
cians, concerned  to  find  by  metaphysical  methods  a  con- 
ception of  the  state  which  should  form  part  of  a  rational 
solution  of  the  problem  of  the  universe,  and  should  prove 
indeed  that  there  was  no  reality  in  the  universe  except 
reason.  To  the  ordinary  British  politician  or  statesman 
the  very  phraseology  of  metaphysical  idealism  was  un- 
intelligible; Mill's  plea  for  Liberty  had  been  psychologi- 
cal, narrow  as  its  psychology  was,  and  not  metaphysical, 
and  any  criticism  of  Mill  which  could  influence  the  main 
body  of  British  political  thought  must  also  be  psychologi- 
cal. Such  a  criticism  was  attempted  by  Matthew  Arnold 
in  Friendship's  Garland  (i866-i87o),14  and  Culture  and 
Anarchy  (i869).15  He  had  been  sent  to  Prussia  in  the 
early  eighteen-sixties  to  report  on  Prussian  education,  and 
had  there  learnt  to  appreciate  the  extraordinary  achieve- 
ments both  in  peace  and  war  possible  to  a  nation  in  which 
"the  idea  of  science  governed  every  department  of  human 
activity";16  while  his  experience  as  school-inspector  at 
home  had  convinced  him  of  the  inevitable  consequences 
of  "so  intently  pursuing  liberty  and  publicity  as  quite  to 
neglect  wisdom  and  virtue;  for  which  alone  .  .  .  liberty 
and  publicity  are  worth  having."17  Arnold  makes  the 

14  Published  as  letters  to  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  (1866-1870),  and  as  a 
book  in  1871.    My  references  are  to  the  Popular  Edition,  Smith,  Elder 

(1903). 

15  Republished   (1869)   from  the  Cornhill  Magazine.     My  references 
are  to  the  Popular  Edition,  Smith,  Elder  (1889). 

16  Friendship's  Garland,  p.  10. 

17  Friendship's  Garland,  p.  98. 

177 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

Prussian  hero  of  Friendship's  Garland  say,  "We  [Prus- 
sians] set  to  work  to  make  ourselves  strong  ...  by  cul- 
ture, by  forming  our  faculties  of  all  kinds,  by  every  man 
doing  the  very  best  he  could  with  himself,  by  trusting, 
with  an  Ernst  der  ins  Ganze  geht,  [which  one  may  trans- 
late "intellectual  seriousness  and  thoroughness,"]  to  mind 
and  not  to  claptrap."18  "Freedom,"  Arnold  says,  "like 
Industry,  is  a  very  good  horse  to  ride,  but  to  ride  some- 
where,"19 and  "somewhere"  means  towards  "the  work  of 
making  human  life,  hampered  by  a  past  which  it  has  out- 
grown, natural  and  rational."20  Therefore,  he  tells  his 
countrymen,  "instead  of  every  man  .  .  .  thinking  it  bliss 
to  talk  at  random  about  things  .  .  .  you  should  seriously 
understand  that  there  is  a  right  way  of  doing  things,  and 
that  the  bliss  is,  without  thinking  of  one's  self -conse- 
quence, to  do  them  in  that  way,  or  to  forward  their  being 
done."21  Englishmen  especially  should  turn  their  backs 
on  the  "chance  medley  of  accidents,  intrigues,  hot  and 
cold  fits,  stockjobbing,  newspaper  articles,  conversations 
on  the  railway,  conversations  on  the  omnibus,  out  of 
which  grows  the  foreign  policy  of  a  self-governing  people, 
when  that  self  is  the  British  Philistine."22  If  we  wished 
our  democracy  to  survive  we  must  realize,  as  both  the 
German  and  the  French  Liberals  did,  that  the  "idea  at 
the  bottom  of  democracy"  is  not  the  doctrine  that  "being 
able  to  do  what  one  likes,  and  say  what  one  likes,  is  suffi- 
cient for  salvation,"23  but  "the  victory  of  reason  and  in- 

18  Friendship's  Garland,  p.  17. 

19  Friendship's  Garland,  p.  141. 

20  Friendship's  Garland,  p.  129. 

21  Friendship's  Garland,  p.  13. 

22  Friendship's  Garland,  p.  88. 

23  Friendship's  Garland,  p.  n. 

I78 


LIBERTY 

telligence  over  blind  custom  and  prejudice."24  We  should, 
therefore,  in  so  far  as  we  were  real  democrats,  give 
authority  to  "our  best  self  or  right  reason  by  making  the 
action  of  the  State,  or  nation  in  its  collective  character, 
the  expression  of  it."25 

Arnold  in  1870  still  clung  to  the  hope  that  the  ruling 
force  in  German  national  policy  would  be  a  Periclean 
combination  of  liberty  and  thoroughness.  In  a  letter  to 
the  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  written  on  August  9,  1870  (three 
days  after  the  battle  of  Woerth),  he  makes  his  Arminius 
say,  "I  have  no  love  for  the  preaching  old  drill-sergeant 
who  is  called  King  of  Prussia,  or  for  the  audacious  con- 
spirator who  pulls  his  wires.  ...  I  believe  [Germany] 
will  end  by  getting  rid  of  these  gentry;  and  that  till  that 
time  comes  the  world  will  never  know  of  what  real  great- 
ness she  is  capable."28  As,  during  a  war  infinitely  more 
terrible  than  that  of  1870,  I  re-read  Matthew  Arnold's 
appeal,  I  myself  felt  that  here  was  a  great  opportunity 
missed  by  the  world.  British  Liberals  might,  fifty  years 
ago,  have  learnt  from  him  and  his  German  teachers  a  new 
conception  of  their  own  creed;  they  might  have  realized 
that  Liberty  only  led  to  "great  energies  guided  by  vigor- 
ous reason"  in  a  people  who,  instead  of  waiting  for  energy 
and  reason  to  appear  of  themselves,  were  willing  to  make 
the  organized  effort  of  will  necessary  to  achieve  them. 
And  Prussia  might  have  found  in  Britain,  if  not  a  clear 
and  complete  realization  of  political  liberty,  yet  a  political 
tradition  which  had  already  taken  many  of  the  practical 
steps  towards  such  a  realization. 

2*  Friendship's  Garland,  p.  8. 

25  Culture  and  Anarchy,  p.  84. 

26  Friendship's  Garland,  pp.  73-74. 

179 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

That  Arnold  earned  no  such  place  in  the  history  of 
political  thought  was,  I  think,  due  to  two  causes.  The 
first  was  that  German  Liberalism  failed  in  fact  to  control 
German  thoroughness;  the  new  empire  was  formed  on 
the  policy,  not  of  Humboldt  and  Bunsen,  but  of  the 
"audacious  conspirator"  and  the  "preaching  old  drill- 
sergeant."  But  a  second  reason  was  that  Arnold  himself 
preached  Ernst  der  ins  Ganze  geht  better  than  he  prac- 
tised it.  Every  advocate  of  an  intellectual  method  is 
bound  to  illustrate  his  argument  by  himself  using  his  own 
method,  and  is  bound  to  make  mistakes  in  doing  so.  But 
Arnold  did  not  give  his  method  a  fair  chance.  He,  like 
Mill,  was  an  official,  whose  books  were  written  before  or 
after  a  day  of  official  work,  spent,  in  Arnold's  case,  in 
contact  with  undeveloped  or  subordinate  minds.  He,  like 
Mill,  consciously  avoided  the  effort  of  political  invention. 
"Our  main  business,"  he  says,  "at  the  present  moment  is 
not  so  much  to  work  away  at  certain  crude  reforms  .  .  . 
as  to  create,  through  the  help  of  ...  culture  ...  a 
frame  of  mind  out  of  which  the  schemes  of  really  fruitful 
reforms  may  with  time  grow"  (Culture  and  Anarchy,  p. 
156).  Fruitful  political  reforms  do  not  grow,  but  are 
made.  Arnold,  again,  was  more  interested  in  literature 
than  in  social  theory,  and  never  drove  his  way  through 
the  social  prejudices  which  he  had  acquired  at  Rugby  and 
Oxford.  He  thought  of  his  own  political  work  mainly  as 
a  fight  against  the  alliance  between  religious  noncon- 
formity and  a  priori  Liberalism,  against  "Miallism  and 
Millism."27  Nonconformity  represented  to  Arnold  the 
centre-point  of  the  narrowness  and  vulgarity  of  the  Eng- 

27  Friendship's  Garland,  p.  17.    Miall  was  editor  of  the  Nonconform- 
ist. 

180 


LIBERTY 

lish  "narrow  and  vulgar  middle-class."28  He  treats  the 
"Nonconformists'  antipathy  to  Church  establishments" 
as  the  necessary  opposite  of  "the  power  of  reason  and 
justice"29  and  the  Deceased  Wife's  Sister  Bill  as  the  neces- 
sary antithesis  to  Geist.  The  policy  of  Disestablish- 
ment and  the  Deceased  Wife's  Sister  Bill  may  have  been 
wise  or  unwise;  but  the  question  whether  the  permanent 
endowment  of  a  fixed  creed  is  good,  or  whether  it  is  better 
that  so  important  a  subject  as  the  propagation  of  the  hu- 
man race  in  Britain  should  be  regulated  by  the  House  of 
Commons  on  sociological  grounds,  or  by  the  House  of 
Lords  on  grounds  of  ecclesiastical  authority,  was  matter 
for  enquiry;  and  Arnold  never  convinced  the  Noncon- 
formists that  he  attempted  that  enquiry  with  real  intellec- 
tual seriousness.  Every  able  young  Nonconformist  in 
Arnold's  time,  when  he  had  attained  such  higher  educa- 
tion as  the  existing  Church  monopoly  allowed,  or  had  suc- 
ceeded in  any  profession,  knew  that  he  could  gain  both 
an  easy  reputation  for  "culture"  and  admission  to  the 
governing  English  class,  by  an  insincere  or  half-sincere 
acceptance  of  Anglicanism.  To  him  this  was  a  life-long 
temptation  of  the  devil,  and  Arnold's  plea  in  the  name 
of  "Sweetness  and  Light"  that  he  should  abandon  the 
"Dissidence  of  Dissent,"  and  bring  himself  into  "contact 
with  the  main  current  of  national  life,  like  the  member  of 
an  Establishment"30  seemed  only  a  more  than  usually 
snobbish  way  of  presenting  that  temptation.  After  the 
completion  of  the  German  victory  over  France,  Arnold 

28  Friendship's  Garland,  p.  17. 

29  Culture  and  Anarchy,  p.  125. 

30  Culture  and  Anarchy,  p.  14. 

181 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

wrote,  "There  are  many  lessons  to  be  learnt  from  the 
present  war;  I  will  tell  you  what  is  for  you  the  great  les- 
son to  be  learnt  from  it: — obedience."31  He  here  ignored 
the  existence  of  a  natural  and  general  instinct  to  lead,  and 
to  assert  oneself,  as  completely  as  Mill  ignored  the  exist- 
ence of  a  corresponding  instinct  to  follow,  and  to  efface 
oneself.  Obedience  is  a  poor  word  even  for  one  side  of 
that  relation  between  the  citizens  of  a  free  community  in 
which  all  govern  and  all  are  governed. 

In  1874  British  Liberalism,  after  forty- four  years  of 
almost  uninterrupted  power,  lost  its  control  over  British 
policy,  and  lost  it  largely  because  its  conception  of  Liberty 
was  inadequate  for  the  solution  of  any  really  difficult 
political  problem.  Already  in  1874  the  problem  of  the 
relation  between  the  state  and  the  individual  citizen  was 
being  complicated  by  the  problem  of  the  relation  between 
the  state  and  associations  smaller  than  the  state.  At  the 
election  of  that  year  the  Trade  Unionists  found  a  clearer 
recognition  of  their  point  of  view  among  most  Conserva- 
tives than  among  most  Liberals;  and  received  by  the 
Conservative  legislation  of  1875  enlarged  powers  of  cor- 
porate action.  It  was  the  Conservatives  who  created  the 
powerful  County  Councils  in  1888,  and  who  prepared  that 
further  reform  of  English  Local  Government  which  the 
Liberals  passed  in  1894.  The  majority  of  Liberals  were 
frankly  hostile  to  the  grant  of  liberty  of  action  to  an 
endowed  and  "established"  Church;  but  Gladstone  was  a 
passionate  High  Churchman,  and  his  concessions  to  the 
Church  in  the  Education  Act  of  1870  had  split  the  Liberal 
Party  to  its  centre.  Gladstone  finally  resigned  in  1874 
because  his  party  refused  to  follow  him  in  establishing  a 

^Friendship's  Garland,  p.  12  (written  Candlemas  Day,  1871). 

182 


LIBERTY 

Catholic  university  desired  by  the  majority  of  voters  in 
Ireland  and  disliked  by  a  majority  of  voters  in  the  United 
Kingdom.  When  Gladstone  came  back  to  power  in  1880, 
his  government  broke  up,  after  five  years  of  confusion 
and  division,  because  Liberalism  provided  no  guidance  in 
the  new  imperial  and  foreign  problems  which  had  resulted 
from  the  improvement  of  world-communications.  Lord 
Ripon  was  sent  in  1880  to  govern  India  on  the  principle 
of  Gladstone's  Midlothian  speeches;  but  he  was  supported 
neither  by  the  British  officials  in  India  nor  by  the  Cabinet 
at  the  British  end  of  the  new  telegraphic  cables.  Egypt 
is  on  the  way  to  India  and  Arabi  when  he  rose  in  1881 
seemed  to  some  Liberals  a  patriot  "rightly  struggling  to 
be  free,"  and  to  others  a  rebel  against  the  authority  neces- 
sary for  British  safety.  The  Liberals  were  willing  to 
bring  the  citizens  of  any  colony  in  the  Empire  (even 
although,  as  in  Natal,  they  were  a  handful  of  white  set- 
tlers among  an  overwhelmingly  non- white  population) 
under  the  formula  of  "self-government";  but  that  formula 
did  not  in  1881  solve  the  problem  of  the  Transvaal  Boers. 
In  the  Midlothian  campaign  of  1879  Gladstone  had 
said  that  we  had  chosen,  "I  am  tempted  to  say,  insanely, 
to  place  ourselves  in  the  strange  predicament  of  the  free 
subjects  of  a  monarchy  going  to  coerce  the  free  subjects 
of  a  republic,  and  to  compel  them  to  accept  a  citizenship 
which  they  decline  and  refuse";32  yet  in  1881  Gladstone's 
government  fought  a  Boer  force  at  Majuba  Hill,  and 
then  concluded  a  peace  which  seemed  to  make  the  fight- 
ing unintelligible.  In  1884  Lord  Granville  told  Bismarck 
that  we  had  no  interest  in  the  Cameroons,  and  a  few 

32Morley's  Life  of  Gladstone,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  27. 

183 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

months  later  we  nearly  went  to  war  with  Germany  be- 
cause Bismarck  had  promptly  annexed  them.  Meanwhile 
the  problem  of  the  relation  between  Liberal  principles  and 
private  property  was  slowly  developing.  Liberalism  had 
assumed  that  an  instructed  democracy  would  understand 
that  the  existing  inequalities  of  private  property  (except 
in  so  far  as  they  were  caused  by  primogeniture  and  entail) 
were  due  rather  to  natural  law  than  to  the  will  of  man. 
In  1890  the  Trade  Union  Congress  passed  a  series  of 
socialistic  resolutions,  and  henceforth  Liberalism  had  to 
compete  with  a  class-conscious  Labor  Party  in  applying 
the  principle  of  Liberty  to  a  condition  of  economic  in- 
equality which  was  now  widely  thought  of  as  due  to  human 
action  in  the  past,  and  as  modifiable  by  human  action  in 
the  future.  The  Liberal  Government  of  1892  to  1895 
fell  more  rapidly  than  did  that  of  1880-1885  because  their 
inability  to  construct  an  intelligible  social  or  Irish  policy 
on  the  principle  of  Liberty  had  become  still  more  clear. 
Gladstone,  for  the  quarter  of  a  century  from  1868  to  1893, 
was  the  Liberal  Party,  and  drove  his  party  with  unsur- 
passed powers  of  personal  work  and  leadership;  but 
Gladstone  the  orator  and  financier  and  "old  parliamentary 
hand"  was  also  Gladstone  the  author  of  Homeric  Studies 
and  of  The  Impregnable  Rock  of  Holy  Scripture,  the  man 
for  whom  there  had  been  "a  battle  between  Eton  and 
education  and  Eton  had  won."33  Libertv  to  Gladstone 

j 

was  always  the  "great  and  precious  gift  of  God"  without 
which  "human  excellence  cannot  grow  up  in  a  nation";34 
but  to  the  end  of  his  life  Gladstone  no  more  understood 

88  Morley's  Life  of  Gladstone,  Vol.  I,  p.  Jo. 
34  Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  p.  84. 

184 


LIBERTY 

the  psychological  processes  involved  in  the  more  complex 
problems  of  Liberty  than  he  did  the  mental  processes 
involved  in  the  composition  of  the  Iliad  and  the  Penta- 
teuch. 

During  the  years  of  Liberal  eclipse  from  1895  to  1905, 
the  practical  necessities  of  an  industrial  democracy  ruling 
an  overseas  empire;  the  increasing  power  of  the  Labor 
Party;  the  influence  of  the  Hegelian  philosophy  of  his- 
tory on  a  few  able  Oxford  politicians;  and  the  economic, 
political,  and  military  pressure  of  German  competition, 
combined  to  produce  a  conscious  break  in  the  minds  of 
the  Liberal  leaders  with  the  simple  principle  of  Mill  on 
Liberty.  In  1906  the  Liberal  Party  came  back  from  the 
elections  with  a  majority  of  nearly  two  to  one  over  all 
other  parties  combined.  It  was  no  longer  the  party  which 
Gladstone  had  led,  Mill  had  inspired,  and  Matthew  Ar- 
nold had  derided.  In  1902  there  had  appeared  a  book 
on  Liberalism  by  Sir  Herbert  Samuel  with  an  introduc- 
tion by  Mr.  Asquith.  Mr.  Asquith  wrote  that  "it  may 
seem  a  truism  to  say  that  the  Liberal  Party  inscribes 
among  its  permanent  watchwords  the  name  of  Liberty. 
.  .  .  Freedom  of  speech,  freedom  of  the  press,  freedom 
of  association  and  combination  .  .  .  we  in  these  latter 
days  have  come  to  look  upon  as  standing  in  the  same  cate- 
gory as  the  natural  right  to  light  and  air.  .  .  .  But  with 
the  growth  of  experience  a  more  matured  opinion  has 
come  to  recognize  that  Liberty  (in  a  political  sense)  is 
not  only  a  negative  but  a  positive  conception.  Freedom 
cannot  be  predicated  in  its  true  meaning  either  of  a  man 
or  a  society  merely  because  they  are  no  longer  under  the 
compulsion  of  restraints  which  have  the  sanction  of  posi- 
tive law.  To  be  really  free  they  must  be  able  to  make 

185 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

the  best  use  of  faculty,  opportunity,  energy,  life."35  Mr. 
Asquith  here,  like  Mr.  Webb  and  others,  was  at  that  time 
attempting  to  use  the  idea  of  Liberty  mainly  as  a  support 
for  the  different  though  almost  equally  important  idea  of 
equality.  He  therefore  indicates  no  difference  between 
human  and  non-human  hindrances  to  our  faculties.  Nor 
does  he  distinguish  between  Mill's  automatic  conception 
of  human  energy  and  the  conative  conception  of  Pericles 
and  Matthew  Arnold.  Sir  Herbert  Samuel  (whose  notes 
refer  to  Kant  and  Green  and  Bradley,  as  well  as  to  Mill 
and  Sidgwick)  pushes  his  analysis  much  further,  though 
not  so  far  as  Pericles.  He  sees  that  the  political  idea  of 
Liberty  must  involve  not  only  Mr.  Webb's  "practical 
opportunity  of  ...  exercising  our  faculties,"  but  a  con- 
scious and  organized  will  to  do  so.  He  declares  that 
"  'advance  of  the  age,'  'evolution  of  society,'  'the  natural 
progress  of  mankind,'  these  are  no  more  than  phrases, 
summarizing  the  results  of  human  effort."36 

35  H.  H.  Asquith  (January,  1902),  in  an  introduction  to  Liberalism: 
its  principles  and  proposals,  by  Herbert  Samuel,  pp.  g  and  10. 

36  Liberalism,  by  Herbert  Samuel,  p.  16. 


186 


CHAPTER  VIII 
RIGHTS,  HONOR,  AND  INDEPENDENCE 


1 


analysis  of  Liberty  will  help  us  in  analyzing 
certain  other  political  principles,  of  which  the 
most  important  historically  is  Natural  Right. 
The  term  Natural  Right  acquires  a  definite  and  measur- 
able meaning  if  we  consider  it,  as  we  considered  Liberty, 
in  relation  to  the  psychological  fact  that  obstruction  by 
human  action  of  the  normal  course  of  certain  instincts — 
sex,  property,1  family  affection,  "leadership  and  follow- 
ing," etc. — causes  a  feeling  of  painful  resentment.  When 
this  happens,  if  we  conceive  of  our  position  as  primarily 
one  of  personal  helplessness,  we  say  we  are  "unfree";  if 
we  conceive  of  our  position  as  a  certain  relation  to 
society  we  say  that  we  are  "wronged";  the  two  feelings 
of  unfreedom  and  wrong  are  different  but  closely  related. 
Natural  Rights  are  therefore  real  things,  arising  from 
real  and  permanent  facts  in  our  psychology.  But  because 
the  instinct  which  creates  them  was  evolved  to  meet  the 
needs  of  a  primitive  environment,  we  must  remember  that 

1  For  the  instinct  of  property  and  its  relation  to  modern  property 
systems  see  my  Human  Nature  in  Politks,  Part  I,  Chap.  I. 

I87 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

in  our  modern  environment  it  is  no  more  invariably  good 
for  us  to  receive  all  our  natural  rights  than  it  is  to  be  com- 
pletely free.  It  may  be  better  on  any  particular  occasion 
to  endure  the  pain  involved  in  the  obstruction  of  the  in- 
stincts which  make  us  claim  our  rights;  or  to  "sublimate" 
those  instincts  by  satisfying  them  in  a  new  way;  or  even 
to  inhibit  them  by  an  effort  of  will,  based  on  a  calculation 
of  results,  and  leading  to  a  disciplined  but  unstable  habit. 
All  this  may  sound  obvious  enough;  but  if  one  considers 
the  use  of  the  term  Natural  Right  during  the  centuries 
when  it  had  its  greatest  driving  force,  one  continually 
finds  that  confusion  and  bloodshed  was  caused  by  the  fact 
that  there  was  no  common  ground  between  men  who  felt 
a  passionate  instinctive  desire  for  their  Rights,  and  men 
who  demanded  a  rational  explanation  and  delimitation  of 
them. 

In  October  and  November,  1647,  f°r  instance,  a  series 
of  debates  on  the  future  government  of  England  took 
place  in  the  General  Council  of  the  "New  Model"  army 
at  Putney,  and  a  shorthand  note  of  them  was  taken  by 
William  Clarke.  Colonel  Rainborow,  the  leader  of  the 
extremists,  said  in  his  speech,  "Every  man  born  in  Eng- 
land cannot,  ought  not,  neither  by  the  Law  of  God  nor 
the  law  of  nature,  to  bee  exempted  from  the  choice  of  those 
who  are  to  make  lawes  for  him  to  live  under,  and  for  him, 
for  ought  I  know,  to  loose  his  life  under"  (p.  305).  Ire- 
ton  made  an  equally  sincere  protest  that  the  idea  of  nat- 
ural right,  and  of  the  justice  and  injustice  that  followed 
from  it,  meant  nothing  but  the  casual  opinion  of  any 
speaker  at  any  moment.  "When  I  do  hear  men  speake 
of  laying  aside  all  engagements  to  [consider  only]  that 
wild  or  vast  notion  of  what  in  every  man's  conception  is 

188 


RIGHTS,  HONOR,  AND  INDEPENDENCE 

just  or  unjust,  I  am  afraid  and  do  tremble  att  the  bound- 
lesse  and  endlesse  consequences  of  itt"  (p.  264}*  Crom- 
well told  the  soldiers  that  he  himself  was  an  opportunist 
with  no  general  theory  as  to  the  relation  of  government 
to  Natural  Right.  He  was  not  "wedded  and  glued  to 
formes  of  government  ..."  (p.  277).  "It  is  the  generall 
good  of  them  and  all  the  people  in  the  kingdome  [we 
ought  to  consult].  That's  the  question,  what's  for  their 
good,  nott  what  pleases  them"  (p.  209). 

After  the  Restoration  of  1661  the  whole  progress  of 
English  political  thought  was  checked,  because  there  was 
no  chance  of  an  understanding  between  the  followers  of 
Hobbes,  who  insisted  on  a  psychological  basis  for  political 
theory  but  could  give  no  psychological  explanation  of  the 
passion  for  Natural  Rights,  and  the  followers  of  Locke, 
who  insisted  on  the  reality  of  Natural  Rights  but  gave  a 
metaphysical  explanation  of  them.  Throughout  the  years 
of  the  French  Revolution  Jeremy  Bentham,  the  humani- 
tarian and  reformer,  remained  a  Tory  because  of  his  con- 
tempt for  the  "nonsense  upon  stilts"  of  "natural  and  im- 
prescriptible rights";3  and  Francis  Place,  when  he  set 
himself  after  Waterloo  to  find  a  rational  basis  for  Radi- 
calism, created  a  wall  of  suspicion  between  himself  and 
the  working  class  leaders  of  his  time  (who  thought  as 
their  successors  still  often  think  in  terms  of  Natural 
Right)  by  his  contempt  for  "what  are  called  inherent  in- 
defeasible rights,  which  are  made  to  include  whatever 
particular  object  may  be  aimed  at."  In  the  American 
Civil  War,  both  North  and  South  passionately  desired 
those  "unalienable  Natural  Rights"  which  were  asserted 

2Camden  Society,  The  Clarke  Papers,  ed.  C.  H.  Firth  (1891),  Vol.  I. 
3  Works,  Vol.  II,  p.  501. 

189 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

in  the  Declaration  of  Independence.  But  the  South  in- 
terpreted those  Rights  with  reference  to  their  strong  in- 
stincts of  property,  racial  superiority,  and  corporate  free- 
dom; while  the  North  interpreted  them  with  reference  to 
their  metaphysical  and  religious  conception  of  right  and 
wrong.  Both  the  psychological  and  the  metaphysical 
argument  suffered  from  the  fact  that  men  have  contin- 
ually ignored  the  difference  between  that  which  it  is  nat- 
ural to  us  to  claim,  and  that  which  it  is,  in  view  of  the 
whole  circumstances,  good  for  us  to  receive;  if  a  claim  is 
natural,  men  have  assumed  that  its  satisfaction  is  good 
for  us,  and  if  its  satisfaction  is  good  for  us,  they  have 
assumed  that  the  claim  is  natural.  One  would  say  that 
they  have  played  with  two  different  meanings  of  the  word 
"right,"  if  it  were  not  that  they  have  never  recognized 
that  the  two  meanings  are  different. 

The  long  and  blood-stained  history  of  the  principle  of 
Honor  is  another  instance  of  the  bad  results  which  may 
follow  from  the  existence  of  a  strong  political  passion 
which  men  name  and  recognize,  but  of  which  they  can 
give  no  psychological  explanation  and  delimitation.  The 
psychological  facts  behind  the  principle  of  Honor  are 
closely  akin  to  those  behind  the  principles  of  Liberty  and 
Natural  Right.  The  three  feelings  of  unfreedom,  wrong, 
and  dishonor,  are  all  caused  by  the  fact  that  the  normal 
function  of  some  important  instinct  has  been  obstructed 
by  human  action;  but  while  the  emotions  of  unfreedom 
and  wrong  are  stimulated  by  our  recognition  of  our  help- 
lessness or  its  social  cause,  the  emotion  of  dishonor  is 
stimulated  by  our  recognition  of  the  fact  that  our  fellows 
no  longer  respect  us,  and  that  we  can  no  longer  play  our 
part  as  equal  comrades  or  potential  leaders  in  the  coopera- 

190 


RIGHTS,  HONOR,  AND  INDEPENDENCE 

live  action  of  our  society.  A  man  may  feel  oppressed  or 
wronged  when  no  one  except  himself  and  his  oppressor 
knows  what  has  happened;  he  only  feels  dishonored  when 
he  believes  or  imagines  that  others  know  of  it.  And, 
further,  he  does  not  feel  dishonored,  unless  he  or  others 
believe  that  there  has  been  some  defect  from  the  normal 
in  his  own  reaction  to  the  wrong  done  to  him.  If  he  has 
succeeded  in  resisting  the  wrong,  or  in  exacting  vengeance 
on  the  wrongdoer,  or  even  has  fought  to  the  uttermost 
though  unsuccessfully,  his  neighbors  still  respect  him;  he 
and  they  feel  that  "his  honor  has  been  satisfied."  A  corre- 
sponding feeling  of  corporate  dishonor  may  affect  all  the 
members  of  a  society,  if  the  society  as  a  whole  has  shown 
a  want  of  courage  in  resisting  wrong,  or  has  otherwise 
lost  the  respect  of  the  members  of  other  societies.4  The 
principle  of  Honor,  like  those  of  Liberty  and  Right,  can, 
in  a  modern  society,  be  both  very  useful  and  very  dan- 
gerous. If  we  desire  to  make  it  more  useful  and  less  dan- 
gerous we  must  consciously  learn  so  to  stimulate,  satisfy, 
sublimate,  or  inhibit  the  relevant  instinct  as  to  lead,  here 
and  now,  to  a  good  life.  We  can,  for  instance,  to  some 
extent  choose  what  type  of  conduct  in  a  man  or  a  society 
shall  be  held  by  outsiders  to  constitute  dishonor  or  to 
satisfy  honor.  Honor  may,  fortunately  for  us,  be  felt  to 
be  satisfied  by  acts  very  different  from  those  suggested 
by  our  instincts  in  their  primitive  environment.  In  a 
society  where  respect  for  law  is  inculcated  on  all,  a  man 
who  is  struck  may  satisfy  honor  by  prosecuting  his  op- 

4  The  feeling  of  dishonor  is  closely  akin,  not  only  to  the  feeling  of 
wrong,  but  also  to  the  more  general  and  very  primitive  feeling  of  shame. 
A  man  (and,  perhaps  a  gregarious  bird  like  a  rook,  or  a  gregarious  mam- 
mal like  a  wolf  or  a  dog)  who  is  a  discovered  thief,  feels  a  shame  that 
is  very  like  the  dishonor  felt  by  a  discovered  coward. 

IQI 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

ponent  without  returning  his  blow;  and  we  can  train  our- 
selves to  feel  that  the  "neighbors"  to  whose  contempt  or 
respect  we  are  sensitive,  shall  be  either  our  own  family, 
or  our  tribe,  or  our  nation,  or  even  those  in  all  nations 
who  share  our  outlook  on  life. 

A  fourth  principle  which  can  be  made  enormously  more 
useful  by  the  same  kind  of  psychological  analysis  is  Inde- 
pendence, as  the  term  is  used  in  the  phrase,  "The  Inde- 
pendence of  the  Judicature."  Here  the  psychological  fact 
behind  the  principle  is  not  the  immediate  reaction  of  feel- 
ing in  a  man  whose  impulses  are  obstructed,  but  the  per- 
manent result  on  his  conduct  of  the  obstruction  of  some 
impulses  and  the  encouragement  of  others.  We  make  a 
judge  "independent,"  not  in  order  to  spare  him  personal 
humiliation,  but  in  order  that  certain  motives  shall  not, 
and  certain  other  motives  shall,  permanently  direct  his 
official  conduct.  The  government  or  constituent  assembly 
which  adopts  the  principle  of  Judicial  Independence  is  in 
the  same  position  as  the  inexpert  members  of  a  firm  which 
has  acquired  a  wall-paper  factory,  and  has  to  engage  a 
designer.  They  have  themselves  neither  the  knowledge 
nor  the  taste  nor  the  time  which  would  enable  them  to 
make  their  own  designs,  or  to  decide  which  designs  will 
sell  or  even  which  designs  they  themselves  after  a  year 
or  two's  experience  will  like.  They  therefore  choose  a 
man  with  certain  special  powers  and  training,  and  give 
him  independent  responsibility  for  the  firm's  patterns. 
But  they  desire  that  he  shall  not  only  be  capable  of  mak- 
ing good  designs  and  free  from  any  obstruction  in  the 
process,  but  also  that  he  shall  be  impelled  to  do  his  work 
by  certain  positive  impulses,  conscious  or  half -conscious, 
which  are  much  more  subtle  than  the  habit  of  shop- 

192 


RIGHTS,  HONOR,  AND  INDEPENDENCE 

discipline  or  the  fear  of  dismissal.  Therefore,  without 
being  themselves  quite  conscious  of  what  they  are  doing, 
they  add  to  the  negative  fact  of  independence  certain  en- 
couragements of  these  positive  impulses.  They  not  only 
pay  him  a  good  salary,  but  also  treat  him  with  personal 
respect;  they  call  his  working-room  "Mr.  Jones's  studio"; 
they  ask  him  and  his  wife  to  dinner;  and  try  to  create 
an  atmosphere  in  which  Mr.  Jones  is  encouraged  both  to 
give  play  to  his  artistic  impulses,  and  half -consciously  to 
coordinate  those  impulses  with  the  general  purposes  of  his 
friends  the  masters  of  the  firm.  So  a  president  or  prime 
minister  knows  that  if  he  forces  judges  to  carry  out  his 
own  decisions  he  will  often  prove  to  be  wrong.  He  there- 
fore chooses  judges  carefully,  and  gives  them  a  status 
negatively  free  from  parliamentary  and  executive  pres- 
sure, and  positively  encouraging  to  "judicial"  impulses. 

All  this  means  that  the  Independence  of  the  Judicature 
is  capable  of  being  made  not  merely  an  isolated  and  sim- 
ple formula,  too  sacred  to  be  criticized  or  modified,  but  a 
principle  founded  on  known  psychological  facts,  and 
capable  of  development  in  accordance  with  new  needs. 
As  soon  as  this  is  realized,  we  can  freely  ask  ourselves 
what  are  the  motives  which  we  desire  to  encourage  in 
judges,  and  whether  we  are  taking  the  right  means  to 
encourage  them.  The  administrative  methods,  for  in- 
stance, of  the  United  States  as  to  the  appointment  and 
position  of  the  federal  judicature  are  based  on  Alexander 
Hamilton's  eloquent  plea  in  The  Federalist  for  the  "firm- 
ness," "integrity,"  and  "moderation,"  of  the  judges.  Suc- 
cessive presidents  carry  out  that  tradition  by  appointing 
practising  lawyers  who  have  earned  the  respect  of  their 
professional  colleagues.  But  there  is  in  America  a  grow- 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

ing  popular  demand  that  judges  should  not  only  be  firm, 
and  incorruptible,  and  moderate,  but  also  progressive;  it 
is  felt  that  a  man  who  is,  for  instance,  entrusted  with  the 
tremendous  powers  of  a  judge  of  the  Federal  Supreme 
Court,  should  understand  and  sympathize  with  the  intel- 
lectual and  moral  tendencies  of  a  generation  in  which  the 
average  adult  citizen  is  not  a  lawyer,  and  is  at  least  twenty 
years  younger  than  the  present  average  judge.  An  Ameri- 
can president  may  ultimately  find  it  best  to  appoint  some- 
what younger  men  to  the  supreme  court,  with  a  touch  in 
some  of  them  of  the  qualities  which  make  poets;  and  the 
men  selected  will,  perhaps,  though  learned  in  the  law,  be 
not  necessarily  trained  as  advocates.  It  may,  again,  be 
found  that  such  men  best  preserve  their  elasticity  of  mind 
and  sympathy  during  their  judicial  career  if  they  are 
brought  under  other  influences  as  well  as  those  of  pro- 
fessional tradition.  They  might,  for  instance,  be  em- 
ployed from  time  to  time  on  special  enquiries  and  other 
quasi-judicial  work  needing  judicial  qualities,  just  as  an 
army  engineer  officer  is  sometimes  employed  on  work 
outside  his  main  duties  but  likely  to  increase  his  fitness 
for  those  duties. 

In  Britain  a  general  reconsideration  of  the  qualities 
which  we  require  in  a  judge,  and  of  the  means  we  take 
to  obtain  and  strengthen  those  qualities,  is  even  more 
urgently  required.  The  Lord  Chancellor,  with  us,  fills  a 
large  proportion  of  the  vacancies  in  the  High  Court  by 
choosing  barristers  who  have  done  conspicuous  political 
service  to  his  own  party.  The  judge,  when  appointed,  is 
so  independent  of  executive  or  parliamentary  control  that 
he  is,  in  practice,  never  removed  except  for  obvious  men- 
tal disease.  He  is  well  paid,  his  office  is  universally  re- 

194 


RIGHTS,  HONOR,  AND  INDEPENDENCE 

spected,  and  he  is  trained  in  that  spirit  of  personal  honor 
which  is  part  of  the  intensely  professional  tradition  of  the 
English  Bar.  An  English  judge  must  very  seldom  feel 
himself  consciously  tempted  to  do  anything  which  he  con- 
sciously believes  to  be  professionally  wrong. 

But  English  statesmen  are  not  made  to  realize  that 
judges  need  elasticity  of  mind,  or  that  sensitiveness  to 
impulses  wider  than  professional  tradition  which  we  call 
public  spirit.  Many  Englishmen  can,  therefore,  name 
cases  in  which  judges  have  been  appointed  with  the  men- 
tal and  moral  characteristics  of  rather  unscrupulous  pro- 
fessional advocates,  or  with  the  moral  blindness  of  in- 
grained political  partisans.  Even  less  care  is  sometimes 
taken  to  secure  the  most  essential  judicial  qualities  in  the 
provincial  (or  County  Court)  judges,  who  do  such  a 
large  and  increasing  part  of  our  judicial  work.  A  new 
analysis  of  the  whole  problem  might  lead  to  the  appoint- 
ment of  English  judges  by  the  Minister  of  Justice  whose 
creation  I  have  already  urged,  aided  by  a  permanent  de- 
partment. English  judges  might  be  appointed  at  a 
much  younger  average  age  than  at  present,  and  after 
experience  either  as  solicitors,  or  barristers,  or  students 
and  teachers  of  jurisprudence.  They  might  normally  be- 
gin by  being  sent  to  the  less  important  posts,  and  the  best 
of  them  might  afterwards  be  promoted  to  the  High  Court, 
which  itself  might  be  (in  all  but  appellate  work)  estab- 
lished in  the  great  provincial  cities  as  freely  as  in  London. 

The  analysis  might  be  extended  to  the  case  of  those 
court  officials  who  do  actual  judicial  work  under  another 
name.  Important  judicial  functions  are,  for  instance,  at 
present  carried  out  in  England  by  the  "masters,"  "regis- 
trars," "clerks"  and  other  officers  of  the  High  Court. 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

These  men  are  appointed  by  the  personal  choice  of  indi- 
vidual judges;  and  the  evidence  which  I  heard  as  a  mem- 
ber of  the  MacDonnell  Commission  on  the  Civil  Service 
in  1915  showed  that  in  this  respect  the  judges  are  still 
guided  by  the  traditions  of  eighteenth-century  "pat- 
ronage"; and  that  family  and  personal  reasons  influence 
appointments  to  permanent,  responsible,  and  well-paid 
posts,  to  a  degree  which  in  any  other  profession  would 
be  held  to  be  inconsistent  with  common  honesty.5 

A  judge,  again,  is  made  "independent,"  not  only  in 
order  that  he  may  show  firmness  and  integrity,  but  also 
because  he  possesses  a  body  of  legal  knowledge  which  it 
is  very  difficult  for  a  lay  statesman  to  test.  But  a  modern 
law-court  requires  from  time  to  time  the  presence  of  other 
experts  whose  knowledge  and  conclusions  it  is  equally 
difficult  for  a  layman  to  test.  Special  knowledge  is,  for 
instance,  often  required  by  the  courts  of  natural  science, 
of  handwriting,  of  commercial  custom,  and  even  of  the 
religious  rites  of  Eastern  races.  Such  special  knowledge 
is  usually  in  England  provided  by  the  profoundly  unsatis- 
factory expedient  of  the  "expert  witness."  His  evidence 
is  as  purely  ex  parte  as  is  the  argument  of  a  barrister,  but 
he  is  generally  chosen  by  the  side  which  pays  him,  because 
he  occupies  some  responsible  public  or  professional  posi- 
tion; and  every  attempt  is  made  to  suggest  to  the  court 
that  he  speaks  as  an  impartial  man  of  science.  The  court 
should  in  all  important  cases  be  provided  with  its  own 

5  See  Appendix  to  the  Sixth  Report  oj  the  Royal  Commission  on  the 
Civil  Service  (1915),  especially  questions  44,399-44408;  51463-51,468; 
51,509-51,512;  57,255-57,259;  59,245-59,252;  60,242;  60,294-60,314.  The 
Commission  unanimously  recommended  that  the  power  of  personal  ap- 
pointment by  judges  should  be  abolished. 

196 


RIGHTS,  HONOR,  AND  INDEPENDENCE 

expert  assessors  (like  the  naval  assessors  who  sit  in  the 
Admiralty  Court)  and  administrative  machinery  should 
be  invented  to  secure  an  absolutely  impartial  choice  of 
them.  The  assessor  should  be  required  to  give  his  opinion 
publicly  on  questions  of  fact,  and  should  be  able  to  oppose 
without  the  risk  of  loss  of  employment  the  opinion  of  the 
presiding  judge.6 

But  the  principle  of  "Independence,"  as  soon  as  we 
attempt  to  analyze  it,  will  be  found  to  extend  far  beyond 
the  law-courts  and  their  officers.  Even  if  we  confine  our- 
selves to  those  public  officials  whose  main  duty  it  is  to 
give  responsible  answers  to  technical  questions,  we  are 
dealing  with  a  body  of  men  which  is  already  large  and 
is  steadily  increasing.  Every  government  department  and 
every  great  city  employs  legal,  chemical,  engineering, 
and  medical  advisers.  During  the  last  fifty  years  people  in 
Britain  have  come  to  rely  absolutely  on  the  sincerity  of 
all  statements  of  facts  made  by  the  members  of  our  cen- 
tral Civil  Service,  who  are  appointed  as  the  result  of  an 
independent  examination,  and,  like  the  judges,  hold  office 
practically  for  life.7  But  the  experience  of  other  coun- 
tries and  our  own  rapid  political  development  during  the 
war  have  shown  that  this  position  is  not  nearly  so  secure 
as  we  had  assumed.  Every  government  department  had 

6  Mr.  H.  J.  Laski  suggests  to  me  that  as  long  as  judges  have  the  power 
to  decide  what  sentences  are  inflicted  on  convicted  criminals  they  should 
be  required  to  consult  trained  and  responsible  psychological  assessors. 
It  would  probably  be  better  that  all  criminal  sentences  should  be  "inde- 
terminate"; and  that  the  whole  treatment  of  prisoners  after  conviction 
should  be  controlled  by  an  expert  medical  and  educational  department, 
responsible  for  all  prisons  and  penal  schools  and  hospitals,  and  constantly 
collecting  and  analyzing,  both  the  records  of  individual  offenders,  and 
the  results,  at  home  and  abroad,  of  various  methods  of  treatment. 

7  See  my  Human  Nature  in  Politics,  Part  II,  Chap.  III. 

IQ7 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

during  the  war  its  publicity  section,  and  the  two  great 
offices  of  Information  and  Propaganda  employed  towards 
the  end  of  the  war  huge  staffs,  and  supplied  more  than 
half  the  war  news  contained  in  our  own  journals,  and  five 
sixths  of  the  statements  about  our  actions  and  intentions 
which  were  sent  to  neutral  and  hostile  countries.  Those 
two  departments  were  wound  up  after  the  war;  but  a 
large  amount  of  government  publicity  work  existed  be- 
fore the  war  and  a  much  larger  amount  will  exist  after 
the  war.  The  officials  engaged  in  this  work  have  special 
knowledge  of  facts  unknown  to  their  audience  and  are 
responsible  for  statements  based  on  that  knowledge.  It 
is  therefore  a  political  problem  of  the  first  magnitude 
how  to  apply  the  principle  of  Independence  to  them,  and 
to  secure  the  necessary  qualities  of  "firmness"  and  "in- 
tegrity"— not  to  speak  of  sympathy  with  progress.  Dur- 
ing the  later  years  of  the  war  the  British  Minister  of 
Information  was  Lord  Beaverbrook,  and  the  Minister  of 
Foreign  Propaganda  was  Lord  Northcliffe.  On  March 
n,  1918,  a  debate  took  place  in  the  House  of  Commons 
on  Lord  Beaverbrook's  appointment.  The  speech  which 
saved  Mr.  Lloyd  George's  government  from  the  possibility 
of  defeat  was  made  by  Mr.  S.  L.  Hughes,  M.P.,  himself  an 
experienced  journalist,  who  said,  "I  think  that  practical 
and  experienced  newspaper  men  are  the  best  men  [for 
the  work  of  propaganda] — I  would  add,  men  who  are  not 
likely  to  be  hampered  in  their  proceedings  by  what  Dr. 
Johnson  has  termed  'needless  scrupulosity.' ' 

In  every  section  of  central  or  local  government  techni- 
cal experts  are  employed  not  only  as  referees  but  also  as 
administrators.  It  is  indeed  no  easy  matter  for  a  minister 
or  town-clerk,  or  for  the  expert  himself,  to  be  sure  in  the 

198 


RIGHTS,  HONOR,  AND  INDEPENDENCE 

daily  work  of  an  office  when  an  expert  should  carry  out 
orders  without  responsibility,  and  when  he  ought  to  claim 
the  rights  and  responsibilities  of  his  expertise;  and  con- 
stant friction  takes  place  in  all  departments  and  munici- 
pal offices  (as  it  takes  place  in  all  War  Councils  and  War 
Offices)  between  the  men  who  think  mainly  as  administra- 
tors and  those  who  think  mainly  as  technicians.  The  ex- 
pert, again,  must  not  only  direct  existing  types  of  work, 
but  also  invent  new  processes,  and  in  this  respect  civilians 
may  learn  from  the  ideals  if  not  from  the  practice  of  mili- 
tary organization.  The  military  staff  works  out  plans 
requiring  the  intimate  interaction  of  many  minds  and  an 
atmosphere  favorable  to  those  new  ideas  which  we  cannot 
directly  create  but  whose  spontaneous  appearance  we  can 
indirectly  encourage.  Attempts  are  therefore  made  to 
give  staff  officers  such  a  measure  of  independence  as 
shall  strengthen  the  motives  of  interest  in  the  work  and 
desire  for  distant  results,  and  shall  prevent  those  motives 
from  being  obstructed  by  a  bullying  general,  or  sup- 
pressed by  their  own  desire  for  immediate  and  cheap 
approval. 

The  Report  of  Lord  Haldane's  Reconstruction  Com- 
mittee of  1915  (Cd.  9230)  proposed  that  throughout  the 
whole  structure  of  British  Government  the  "staff"  func- 
tion of  enquiry  and  thought  should  be  separated  from 
that  of  executive  administration,  and  that  when  the  sepa- 
ration had  been  made  the  two  functions  should  be  care- 
fully coordinated.  The  committee  pointed  out  that  In- 
telligence branches  already  existed  in  several  of  the 
ministries;  and  I  had  opportunities  of  seeing  a  little  of 
the  work  of  some  of  these  branches  both  before  and  dur- 
ing the  war.  Those  that  I  saw  were  remarkable  instances 

199 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

of  the  difference  in  the  psychological  conditions  of  thought 
and  of  action.  The  big  halls  of  a  typical  Whitehall  de- 
partment remind  me  sometimes  of  Plato's  Cave  of 
Shadows;  but  the  little  untidy  rooms  where  one  found  an 
Intelligence  Branch  seemed  to  receive  daylight  through 
a  cranny  in  Plato's  rock.  Men  sat  in  easy  attitudes  and 
laughed  freely;  and  their  talk  was  entirely  candid  and 
entirely  irreverent.  The  daylight  from  their  cranny 
seemed  to  shine  through  things  that  in  the  big  rooms  were 
so  solid — knighthoods,  and  salaries,  and  official  positions 
and  official  precedents.  Things  also  that  in  the  big  rooms 
seemed  shadowy:  the  two-in-the-morning  doubts  which 
one  tries  to  forget  during  working  hours,  the  reality  of 
the  injury  which  might  result  to  unknown  human  beings 
from  the  respectable  official  tradition  of  passing  on  re- 
sponsibility from  department  to  department,  the  feeling 
that  if  one  squandered  time  and  was  agonizingly  sincere 
with  oneself,  the  solution  of  an  apparently  insoluble  prob- 
lem might  yet  be  found  just  below  the  present  level  of 
one's  consciousness — all  these  things  seemed  solid  matters 
of  fact.  It  was  not  till  I  had  said  good-bye,  and  was  walk- 
ing away  through  the  passages  that  I  could  remember 
that  Plato's  ttluminati  have  never  by  themselves  ruled  a 
state,  that  the  ultimate  test  of  clever  talk  and  wide-rang- 
ing thought  is  the  necessity  of  turning  it  into  black  words 
on  white  paper  and  seeing  that  those  words  are  obeyed; 
and  that  in  government  offices,  as  in  army  headquarters, 
the  intellectual  stimulus  of  responsibility  for  truth  must 
be  somehow  coordinated  with  the  more  clumsy  but  often 
more  powerful  intellectual  stimulus  of  responsibility  for 
action. 

A  thorough  analysis  of  the  psychological  facts  under- 

200 


RIGHTS,  HONOR,  AND  INDEPENDENCE 

lying  the  conceptions  of  Liberty  and  Independence  might 
be  further  made  to  influence,  not  only  our  policy  in  ap- 
pointing officials  and  coordinating  their  functions,  but  our 
general  conception  of  modern  democracy.  In  all  great 
industrialized  nations  the  idea  that  representative  govern- 
ment consists  of  the  irresponsible  carrying  out  by  elected 
persons  of  the  directions  of  the  electors  has  definitely 
broken  down;  and  I  have  already  argued  that  a  system 
of  nation-wide  vocational  elections  managed  according 
to  the  same  idea  would  be  even  less  successful.  We  may 
therefore  be  feeling  our  way  to  a  conception  of  democracy 
in  which  the  idea  of  personal  responsibility  will  play  a 
large  part.  Alexander  Hamilton,  when  arguing  (Federal- 
ist No.  78)  for  the  Independence  of  the  Judicature,  refers, 
with  an  unaccustomed  use  of  capitals,  to  the  danger  that 
judges  might  "exercise  WILL  instead  of  JUDGMENT."  A 
future  democratic  representative  as  he  stands  before  his 
constituents  may  realize  that  besides  those  simpler  desires 
in  himself  and  in  them  which  Hamilton  calls  Will  he  can 
by  conscious  effort  strengthen  the  easily  daunted  impulse 
of  Judgment.  The  voter  who  listens  to  him  may  learn  to 
distinguish  in  himself  the  stirrings  of  Will  and  of  Judg- 
ment. The  permanent  official  and  his  ministerial  superior 
may  learn  to  recognize  that  they  are  both  of  them  servants 
of  a  community  to  whom,  as  Burke  claimed,  they  owe  not 
their  "industry"  only,  but  their  "judgment,"8  and  that 
though  they  may  both  have  from  time  to  time  to  take 

8  E.  Burke,  Speech  at  Bristol  at  the  conclusion  of  the  poll  (1774). 
".  .  .it  ought  to  be  the  happiness  and  glory  of  a  representative  to  live 
in  the  strictest  union,  the  closest  correspondence,  and  the  most  unreserved 
communication  with  his  constituents.  ...  It  is  his  duty  to  sacrifice  his 
repose,  his  pleasures,  his  satisfactions,  to  theirs;  and  above  all,  ever,  and 
in  all  cases,  to  prefer  their  interest  to  his  own.  But  his  unbiassed  opinion, 

201 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

part  in  the  carrying  out  of  decisions  in  which  their  judg- 
ment has  been  overridden,  the  abandonment  of  the  effort 
of  judgment  is  a  dereliction  of  duty. 

It  may  even  be  that  some  day  Hamilton's  emphasis  on 
judgment  may  help  us  to  solve  that  which  is  now  the  most 
insoluble  problem  of  democracy — the  position  of  the 
Press.  As  long  as  his  newspapers  pay,  and  the  telephone 
from  his  house  to  the  editorial  offices  is  in  working  order, 
the  owner  of  a  group  of  papers  has  more  absolute  irre- 
sponsibility in  the  use  of  great  power  than  any  other  living 
man.  If  he  is  to  use  his  power  in  a  way  helpful  to  the 
community  he  must  aim  at  the  two  virtues,  veracity  and 
seriousness,  i.e.,  the  more  obvious  virtue  of  saying  only 
what  he  believes  to  be  true,  and  the  less  obvious  virtue 
of  taking  trouble  to  secure  that  his  belief  is  well-founded. 
But  nothing  in  his  position,  or  in  the  qualities  necessary 
to  reach  that  position,  encourages  either  of  those  virtues; 
and  the  anonymous  writers  whom  he  hires  to  carry  out 
his  orders  have  neither  the  personal  independence  of 
artists  nor  the  public  responsibility  of  experts. 

I  could  pursue  my  argument  that  the  independence  of 
those  who  carry  out  any  social  function  is  only  valuable 
if  it  leads  to  certain  positive  mental  and  moral  efforts, 
through  the  case  of  the  professor,  with  the  Lehrjreiheit 
which  he  can  use  or  abuse,  the  doctor,  and  the  plumber. 
In  the  end,  I  should  come  to  the  individual  trying  to  regu- 
late his  own  impulses  by  his  own  painfully  acquired 
knowledge  of  facts,  and  responsible  to  his  future  self  for 
using  that  knowledge  without  fear  or  favor. 

his  mature  judgment,  his  enlightened  conscience,  he  ought  not  to  sacri- 
fice to  you,  to  any  man,  or  to  any  set  of  men  living.  .  .  .  Your  repre- 
sentative owes  you,  not  his  industry  only,  but  his  judgment." 

202 


I 


CHAPTER  IX 
WORLD  COOPERATION 


change  of  scale  from  national  cooperation  to 
world  cooperation,  like  the  change  from  group 
cooperation  to  national  cooperation,  involves  a 
change  in  the  form  and  character  of  the  cooperative 
process. 

In  this  case  also  the  change  is  of  kind,  as  well  as  of 
degree.  If  a  member  of  a  fairly  homogeneous  modern 
nation  creates  for  himself  a  picture  of  his  fellow-nationals 
which  is  near  the  truth,  he  is  likely  to  feel,  in  times  of 
danger  or  difficulty,  an  instinctive  impulse  to  cooperate 
with  them.  A  truthful  picture,  however,  of  an  alien  popu- 
lation often  stimulates  in  us  the  anti-cooperative  instincts 
of  fear  and  suspicion  and  hatred;  and  the  instinct  of  co- 
operative defense  may  act  as  an  anti-cooperative  force; 
the  danger-spots  of  the  world  are  just  those  regions  where 
markedly  different  races  and  cultural  types  are  brought 
into  relations  with  each  other  too  close  for  illusion.  It 
can,  therefore,  be  argued  that,  since  contact  between 
different  races  and  cultures  stimulates  instinctive  hatred, 
mankind  should  avoid  any  attempt  to  cooperate  on  a  scale 

203 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

larger  than  that  of  a  homogeneous  nation.  When,  a  hun- 
dred years  ago,  the  failure  of  the  last  serious  attempt  at 
world  cooperation  became  obvious,  Canning  in  1823 
wrote  to  Sir  Charles  Bagot,  "Things  are  getting  back  to 
a  wholesome  state  again.  Every  nation  for  itself,  and 
God  for  us  all."  So,  in  1920,  after  six  exasperating  years 
of  cooperation  with  Frenchmen,  Italians,  Russians,  Amer- 
icans, and  Japanese,  many  Englishmen  find  themselves 
again  longing  for  a  return  to  the  "wholesome  state"  of 
national  isolation. 

But  men  cannot  now  exist  in  their  present  numbers  on 
the  earth  without  world  cooperation.  The  manufacturing 
populations  of  the  north-temperate  zone  require  for  their 
food  and  clothing  the  vegetable  products  of  the  tropics; 
and  the  organization  of  tropical  agriculture  and  transport 
requires  the  energy  and  science  and  capital  of  races  who 
can  at  present  only  breed  in  a  cool  climate.  Metals, 
again,  and  coal  and  oil  are  scattered  irregularly  over  the 
land  surface  of  the  world,  and  must  be  brought  from  the 
places  where  they  are  found  to  the  places  where  they  can 
be  most  effectually  used.  Improvements  in  communica- 
tion and  transport  are  constantly  intensifying  and  compli- 
cating this  economic  process.  Cobden  dreamt  that  inten- 
sive commercial  intercourse  could  take  place  without  the 
friction  and  danger  involved  in  political  relations;1  but 
Cobden 's  dream  has  proved  impossible.  Rivalry  among 
nations  in  the  exploitation  of  the  resources  of  the  globe 

1  "At  some  future  election,  we  may  probably  see  the  test  of  no  foreign 
politks  applied  to  those  who  offer  to  become  the  representatives  of  free 
constituencies."  Cobden,  England,  Ireland,  and  America  (1835),  in  Po- 
litical Works,  Vol.  I,  p.  43. 

204 


WORLD  COOPERATION 

has  inevitably  led  to  diplomatic  relations,  and  behind 
diplomacy  there  has  always  been  the  threat  of  war. 

In  November,  1918,  Mr.  Wilson's  "fourteen  points" 
seemed  to  many  of  us  to  offer  mankind  an  almost  in- 
credibly favorable  opportunity  of  adopting,  by  a  single 
general  decision,  a  political  scheme  in  the  working  of 
which  men  might  gradually  learn  to  base  world  coopera- 
tion, not  on  threats  of  war,  but  on  a  conscious  and  steadily 
developing  world-policy.  That  opportunity  has  passed, 
and  any  attempt  to  bring  about  "the  great  experiment  of 
living  together  in  a  world  made  conscious  of  itself,"2  must 
now  begin  from  the  bottom.  Here  or  there  in  the  world  a 
new  thought  or  a  new  emotional  appeal  may  give  rise  to 
a  new  institution  or  habit  by  which  world  cooperation 
may  be  made  more  possible;  or  a  new  institution  or  new 
educational  method  may  start  new  thoughts  or  give  new 
weight  to  old  appeals.  The  degree  of  our  success  in  that 
work  will,  in  the  first  place,  depend  on  the  difficult  and 
halting  process  which  our  fathers  used  to  call  "the  tri- 
umph of  human  reason."  We  must  so  strengthen  the  im- 
pulse to  think,  and  the  habit  and  art  of  rational  calcula- 
tion, and  so  realize  the  significance  of  our  conclusions, 
that  we  may  be  able  to  resist  or  modify  or  divert  some  of 
the  strongest  of  our  instincts.  In  the  sixteenth  century 
the  invention  of  new  means  of  world-communication 
spread  syphilis  over  the  globe,  and  created  a  danger, 
which  has  not  yet  wholly  disappeared,  that  the  human 
breeding-stock  might  be  destroyed,  unless  we  could  so 
discover  the  causes  and  effects  of  syphilis,  and  so  realize 
the  significance  of  our  discoveries  as  to  bring  under  new 
rational  control  and  direction  the  enormously  powerful 

2 Miss  Jane  Addams  in  The  Survey  (November,  1915). 

205 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

instinct  of  sex.  Further  inventions  in  world-communica- 
tions, combined  with  inventions  in  military  chemistry  and 
transport,  have  now  so  increased  the  destructive  power 
of  armies  and  fleets  that  the  human  species  is  again  en- 
dangered unless  we  can  so  calculate  and  realize  the  effects 
of  war  as  to  bring  our  instincts  of  hatred  and  suspicion 
under  the  control  of  reason. 

Everything,  therefore,  which  helps  us  to  connect  cause 
and  effect  in  human  long-range  action,  helps  us  to  make 
world  cooperation  more  possible.  We  may,  for  instance, 
by  a  change  of  educational  emphasis,  learn  to  avoid  cer- 
tain elementary  fallacies,  which  men,  who  would  never 
use  them  in  their  short-range  thinking,  constantly  use 
when  thinking  and  talking  of  international  relations.  The 
most  important  of  these  is  the  old  fallacy  of  "all  and 
each."  If  one  nation  acts  selfishly  and  all  other  nations 
act  unselfishly,  the  selfish  nation  may  gain;  but  if  all 
nations  act  selfishly,  disaster  to  all  must  follow.  Now 
that  the  memory  of  the  war  is  still  fresh,  it  is  easy  to  see 
a  childish  want  of  logic  in  Prince  von  Buelow's  statement, 
in  1913,  that  British  policy  was  based  on  "a  sound  and 
justifiable  egoism  .  .  .  which  other  nations  would  do  well 
to  imitate";3  and  some  of  us  felt  that  there  was  a  fault 
of  logic  as  well  as  of  feeling  in  Sir  Edward  Carson's  plea 
in  1916  that  our  government  ought  to  wage  a  world-war 
"in  order  that  whatever  advantages  may  accrue,  shall 
accrue  to  this  country  and  empire,  and  to  no  one  else."* 
Perhaps  in  the  end  our  political  philosophers  may  even 
learn  to  avoid  the  trick  of  making  plausible  generaliza- 

8  Imperial  Germany,  p.  21. 

4  House  of  Commons  (November  9,  1916). 

206 


WORLD  COOPERATION 

tions  about  "The  State"  which  are  obviously  unsound 
when  made  about  "states"  or  "a  state."5 

If  we  desire  to  think  effectively  about  world  coopera- 
tion, we  must  further  learn  to  bring  a  new  problem- 
attitude  to  bear  upon  each  of  the  political  sciences.  The 
background  of  every  political  science  is  history,  and  it  is 
only  in  1920  that  Mr.  Wells  has  published  the  first  history 
of  the  world  consciously  written  in  the  problem-attitude 
of  world  cooperation.6  It  is  sometimes  claimed  that 
international  law  is  by  itself  a  sufficient  foundation  for 
world  cooperation.  We  were  all  thrilled,  in  1916,  by  Lord 
Grey's  statement  that  we  were  fighting  for  "a  peace  that 
re-establishes  respect  for  the  public  law  of  the  world." 
As  I  write,  the  managers  of  the  Republican  party  in 
America  seem  to  be  arguing  that  international  law,  or 
world-law,  as  I  should  like  to  call  it,  is  a  sufficient  substi- 
tute for  world-policy.  World-law  can  never  be  a  substi- 
tute for  world-policy,  and  if  it  is  to  be  an  efficient  guide 
and  instrument  of  world-policy  it  requires,  even  more 
urgently  than  does  national  law,  a  fundamental  psy- 
chological analysis  of  the  idea  of  law.  What,  for  instance, 
is  the  relation  of  law  to  custom,  and  of  custom  to  the  proc- 

5  See  L.  T.  Hobhouse,  The  Metaphysical  Theory  of  the  State  (1918), 
p.  21. 

6  A  writer  in  The  Guardian,  with  a  wide  experience  of  English  ele- 
mentary education,  said,  "As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  teaching  of  history 
and  geography  with  a  view  to  cultivating  patriotic  virtues  is  the  main 
principle   underlying  every  syllabus   in   those  subjects"    (Letter  signed 
B.  D.,  The  Guardian,  October  14,  1915).    When  I  was  a  member  of  the 
London  School  Board  I  formed  the  same  impression.    It  is  well  known 
that  the  same  principle  prevailed,  before  the  war,  in  the  German  schools. 
I  believe  that  an  attempt  is  now  being  made  by  the  English  Board  of 
Education  to  encourage,  under  the  guidance  of  Mr.  F.  S.  Marvin,  a 
wider  outlook  in  English  school  history  teaching. 

.     207 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

ess  of  self-conscious  habituation?  One  of  the  most  im- 
portant functions  of  world-law  must  be  the  arrangement 
in  thinkable  classes  of  what  would  otherwise  be  an  un- 
thinkable chaos  of  facts.  But  how  is  the  work  of  classifi- 
cation, when  undertaken  by  lawyers,  related  to  the  classi- 
fication, often  of  the  same  subject-matter,  undertaken  by 
world  congresses  of  scientists?  What  is  the  relation  of 
world-law  to  national  (or  as  lawyers  call  it  "municipal") 
law?  Is  world  legislation  (the  making  of  new  world-laws 
or  the  application  of  existing  world-laws  to  new  condi- 
tions) possible  without  the  creation  of  a  supernational 
political  authority?  Is  it  possible  to  create  an  approach 
towards  uniformity  in  those  national  laws  which  deal  with 
points  where  local  differences  of  rights  and  customs  cause 
inconvenience  in  the  relations  between  the  citizens  of 
different  states?  It  is  only  by  a  conscious  attempt  to 
answer  questions  like  these  that  we  can  hope  to  solve 
such  world-problems  as  communication  by  sea  and  by 
ocean-canals  and  air,  the  spread  of  disease,  or  migration 
and  naturalization,  credit  and  currency,  the  huge  debts 
now  owed  by  states  to  each  other,  or  the  relation  between 
the  rights  conferred  on  the  United  States  by  a  general 
acceptance  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine,  and  the  rights  con- 
ferred on  other  powers  by  a  "mandate"  under  the  League 
of  Nations. 

The  position,  again,  of  mankind  on  the  globe  may  be 
seen  not  only  as  a  problem  in  the  socially  inherited  ex- 
pedients of  logic  and  law  but  also  as  a  problem  in  the 
biological  processes  of  breeding  and  nutrition.  The  nine- 
teenth-century biologists  lessened  rather  than  increased 
the  possibility  of  world  cooperation.  Their  statement  of 
the  problem  made  it  easy  for  politicians  to  claim  that  any 

208 


WORLD  COOPERATION 

war  which  they  desired  was  a  "biological  necessity."7 
But  a  change  in  the  problem-attitude  of  biologists,  of 
which  one  is  thankful  to  believe  there  are  already  signs, 
may  make  biology  one  of  the  main  sources  of  hope  for  a 
world  cooperation  founded  on  conscious  purpose  instead 
of  blind  struggle.  We  are  only  now  beginning  to  acquire 
the  knowledge  of  the  true  conditions  of  improvements  in 
the  various  human  races  and  the  true  biological  results  of 
intermarriage  between  races.  Botanists  may  see  their 
science,  not  as  a  section  of  "national  economy,"  but  as  a 
means  of  enabling  the  whole  human  race  to  cooperate  in 
every  region  and  climate  in  providing  the  means  of  a  good 
life  for  all  its  members.  Even  Malthus's  problem  of  the 
pressure  of  population  on  food  supply  will  seem  less  in- 
soluble if  it  is  seen  in  relation  to  the  possibility  of  "a  world 
made  conscious  of  itself."  The  study  of  geography 
would  receive  a  new  stimulus  if  school-children  and  uni- 
versity students  and  map-makers  and  travellers  could  see 
their  science  also  as  the  servant  of  world  cooperation,  and 
discuss  the  effect  on  mankind  as  a  whole  of  the  cutting 
of  the  Panama  Canal,  or  the  discovery  of  a  new  natural 
fuel-supply,  or  the  irrigation  of  a  waterless  region. 

Political  "principles"  will  acquire  a  new  fertility  if  we 
learn  to  think  of  them  in  the  problem-attitude  of  world 
cooperation.  Mr.  Page,  speaking  in  England  as  Ameri- 
can Ambassador  on  July  8,  1917,  said  of  his  fellow-coun- 
trymen, "Hitherto  we  have  been  concerned  chiefly  with 
the  development  and  extension  of  liberty  at  home.  We 
now  enter  into  a  holy  crusade  to  help  in  its  extension  in 
this  Old  World."8  It  may  perhaps  be  doubted  whether 

7  Dr.  Grueber  of  Bavaria,  Daily  Chronicle  (May  5,  1915). 
6  Daily  Telegraph  (July  5,  1917). 

209 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

the  most  informing  possible  description  of  internal  politi- 
cal movements  in  America  during  the  twentieth  century 
has  been  "the  development  and  extension  of  liberty." 
But  President  Wilson  would  certainly  have  had  more  in- 
fluence on  world-policy  during  the  Peace  Conference  at 
Paris  if  mankind  had  had  more  practice  in  thinking  of 
Liberty  as  a  world-principle.  If  the  Supreme  Council  of 
the  Allies  could  have  applied  the  principle  of  Liberty  to 
world-problems  with  the  psychological  insight  with  which 
Pericles  applied  it  to  the  city-state  of  Athens,  they  might 
have  asked  themselves  whether  that  principle  was  con- 
sistent with  the  "mandate"  given  to  Poland  over  Eastern 
Galicia,  or  with  the  conscious  attempts  which  have  been 
made  to  break  the  German  national  spirit  by  wounding 
the  self-respect  and  lowering  the  vitality  of  the  whole 
German  population. 

An  almost  equally  important  question  arises  in  the  ap- 
plication of  the  principle  of  Liberty  to  those  individual 
actions  of  the  citizens  of  any  state  which  concern  the 
world-policy  of  their  state.  If  a  world-policy  is  to  exist 
it  must  exist  in  the  minds  and  wills  of  individual  men 
and  women.  Those  individuals  should  obviously  be  free 
to  influence  the  decisions  of  their  nation,  but  should  they 
also  be  free  to  oppose  or  condemn  the  national  decisions 
when  once  formed?  Professor  Hearnshaw  pleaded  in  his 
Freedom  in  Service  (1916)  that  in  order  to  make  the 
principle  of  Liberty  secure,  "The  individual  must  be 
brought  to  recognize  that  politically  he  has  no  separate 
existence,  and  must  learn  to  limit  his  operations  to  his 
proper  share  in  the  constitution  and  determination  of  the 
general  will.  .  .  .  The  State  must  be  supreme."9  Was 

8  Freedom  in  Service,  by  Professor  F.  J.  C.  Hearnshaw,  pp.  95-96. 

210 


WORLD  COOPERATION 

he  right?  In  every  nation  the  national  policy  as  to  pass- 
ports, copyright,  postal  facilities,  marriage,  immigration, 
and  a  hundred  other  questions  affecting  freedom  of  indi- 
vidual intercourse  with  foreigners  will  depend  on  the 
national  acceptance  or  rejection  of  Professor  Hearnshaw's 
argument  that  the  individual  citizen  has  "no  separate 
existence,"  and  therefore  no  moral  relation,  as  an  indi- 
vidual, to  the  rest  of  mankind.  On  that  decision  within 
each  nation  will  also  depend  the  world-question  whether 
the  development  of  conscious  world-policy  shall  be  carried 
by  the  free  interaction  of  millions  of  human  minds  and 
wills  across  the  frontiers  of  states,  or  by  the  efforts  of  a 
few  tired  statesmen  and  officials  aided  by  the  confused 
voices  of  national  parties  and  national  newspapers.  I 
have  already  said  that  the  relation  of  the  newspaper-press 
to  internal  national  policy  is  a  still  unsolved  problem  of 
political  science.10  That  is  still  more  true  of  world  poli- 
tics; we  have  learnt  that  international  crises  under  mod- 
ern European  conditions  are  apt  to  bring  into  supreme 
power  statesmen  who  have  impressed  their  personalities 
on  hundreds  of  millions  of  mankind,  and  who  are  there- 
fore likely  to  be  more  sensitive,  more  vain,  and  more 
suspicious  than  their  fellows.  If  a  newspaper-proprietor, 
who  has  made  his  wealth  by  his  skill  in  manipulating  men, 
gets  personal  access  to  such  a  statesman,  he  can  surround 
him  with  a  refreshing  and  exhilarating  atmosphere  of 
quick  understanding  and  cynical  amusement,  and  with  the 
subtle  flattery  of  the  newspapers  which  the  statesman 
reads.  A  few  weeks  of  this  process  may  divert  to  world 
destruction  national  energies  which  might  have  been  used 
for  world  cooperation.  In  the  election  of  December, 

10  See  ante,  p.  202. 

211 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

1918,  Mr.  Lloyd  George  made  it  impossible  for  him  to  use 
at  Paris  the  power  of  Britain  for  the  promotion  of  recon- 
ciliation and  good-will  in  Europe.  Because  of  what  he 
then  said  and  did  children  a  century  hence  in  every  Euro- 
pean country  who  might  have  lived  in  health  will  be 
crippled  or  killed  by  disease;  youths  and  girls  who  might 
have  entered  into  the  kingdom  of  knowledge  will  toil  in 
ignorance;  nations  who  might  have  been  friends  will  hate 
and  fear  each  other.  After  the  election,  the  political  cor- 
respondent of  Lord  Northcliffe's  Weekly  Dispatch  an- 
nounced that,  "Those  on  the  inside  of  the  election  are 
warmly  congratulating  Lord  Beaverbrook  on  the  success 
of  his  handling  of  it  and  of  the  Prime  Minister.  It  was 
largely  due  to  him  that  the  first  flabby  election  appeals — 
including  the  address  of  the  Prime  Minister  himself — 
were  brought  into  line  with  the  Eight  Points  of  the  North- 
cliffe  Press,  on  which  the  election  was  practically  fought. 
Lord  Beaverbrook  has  been  offered  high  office,  but  he  is 
understood  to  have  declined  it,  partly  for  reasons  of 
health  and  also  because  he  wishes  to  exercise  his  great 
journalistic  talent  in  developing  his  Sunday  Express,  to 
which  the  Weekly  Dispatch  offers  a  very  hearty  wel- 
come."11 When  I  read  this  paragraph  I  felt  as  an 
Athenian  spectator  must  have  felt  who  watched  the 
tragedies  of  CEdipus  or  Agamemnon,  how  small  and  par- 
donable are  those  weaknesses  of  mankind  which  can  set 
in  motion  such  an  avalanche  of  human  suffering.  But 
world  cooperation  cannot  be  achieved  unless  we  learn  to 
think  even  of  the  power  of  the  modern  press,  not  as  an 
irony  of  fate,  but  as  a  thing  which  the  human  mind  has 
contrived  and  the  human  mind  can  alter. 

11  Weekly  Dispatch  (December  29,  1918). 

212 


WORLD  COOPERATION 

During  the  war,  hundreds  of  thousands  of  young 
Britons  and  Americans  consciously  fought  for  the  "prin- 
ciple of  Nationality,"  the  principle,  that  is  to  say,  that 
every  body  of  human  beings  who  feel  themselves  to  share 
the  emotion  of  nationality  should  become  an  independent 
state.  Before  we  can  calculate  the  effect  on  world  co- 
operation of  a  universal  adoption  of  this  principle,  we 
must  ask  ourselves  how  far  the  emotion  of  nationality  is 
an  unchangeable  fact  of  biological  inheritance,  and  how 
far  it  can  be  controlled  by  rational  choice.  We  can  do 
so  best  by  taking  a  marginal  case.  Cardiff  is  a  city  with 
a  mixed  Welsh  and  English  population.  Cannot  and  does 
not  a  young  Welsh  professor  at  Cardiff  choose  whether 
he  shall  feel  and  act  primarily  as  a  Welshman,  or  pri- 
marily as  a  scientist,  or  as  a  human  being,  or  as  a  citizen 
of  the  British  Empire?  Every  day  Jews  in  New  York, 
Germans  in  Wisconsin,  Poles  in  Pittsburgh,  and  Scandi- 
navians in  Dakota  decide  in  what  language  they  shall  talk 
to  their  children,  what  songs  they  shall  sing,  and  to  what 
newspapers  they  shall  subscribe.12  In  such  decisions  the 
"principle  of  Nationality,"  because  it  is  an  absolute  and 
not  a  quantitative  idea,  gives  them  no  help;  and  the 
same  defect  of  thought  has  brought  upon  once  prosperous 
territories  of  Eastern  Europe  war,  which  does  not  know 
whether  it  is  national  war  or  civil  war,  and  pestilence 
and  famine. 

Has  the  principle  of  Equality  any  meaning  in  the  prob- 
lem of  world  cooperation?  The  fact  that  men  had  not 
reached  any  answer  to  that  question  was  one  of  the  main 
reasons  of  the  helplessness  of  the  European  socialist 

12  See  W.  B.  Pillsbury,  Psychology  of  Nationality  and  International- 
ism, especially  Chap.  V. 

213 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

parties  at  the  crisis  of  August,  1914,  and  of  their  con- 
fusion in  the  presence  of  aggressive  Russian  Sovietism 
since  the  war.  A  nation  whose  citizens  approximate  to 
economic  equality  with  each  other,  is,  it  may  be  argued, 
more  likely  to  be  capable  of  world  cooperation  than  a 
nation  divided  into  permanent  factions  of  rich  and  poor, 
or  "whites"  and  "reds."  But  does  the  principle  of  Equal- 
ity mean  that  North  Americans,  who  are  able  and  willing 
to  work  harder  and  more  effectively  than  South  Ameri- 
cans, should  aim  at  economic  equality  between  the  two 
civilizations?  Should  there  be  economic  equality  between 
Russia  and  Italy,  or  England  and  India?  One  may  feel 
that  some  quantitative  economic  relation  between  differ- 
ing populations  is  both  conceivable  and  desirable,  but  at 
the  same  time  that  every  factor  in  that  relation  should 
be  represented  by  a  quantitative  symbol  infinitely  more 
complex  than  that  of  equality. 

Any  serious  effort,  again,  to  make  world  cooperation 
possible  will  require  us  to  approach  from  a  new  angle  the 
invention  and  criticism  of  both  national  and  supernational 
institutions.  Does  the  fact  that  the  hereditary  British 
House  of  Lords  can  hang  up  any  legislation  at  any  mo- 
ment for  two  years,  help  or  hinder  the  British  nation  in 
cooperating  with  other  nations?  The  United  States  Senate 
can  pass  by  a  bare  majority  any  amendment  to  a  treaty 
negotiated  by  the  executive;  but  the  treaty,  when 
amended,  must  drop  unless  it  obtains  a  two-thirds  ma- 
jority. How  does  that  arrangement  work  in  world  poli- 
tics, or  how  does  the  arrangement  work  by  which  the 
American  Federal  Government  is  sometimes  constitu- 
tionally unable  to  enforce  on  one  of  its  constituent  states 
a  foreign  treaty  which  only  the  Federal  Government  is 

214 


WORLD  COOPERATION 

empowered  to  make?  Many  of  the  internal  problems  of 
the  British  Empire  are  conveniently  solved  by  the  exist- 
ence of  "self-governing"  Dominions  with  armies  and 
navies  and  treaty-making  powers  of  their  own.  But  other 
nations  often  consider  that  relation  to  be  one  in  which 
Spenlow  benefits  by  the  uncontrollable  acts  of  Jorkins, 
and  Jorkins  by  the  uncontrollable  acts  of  Spenlow.  In 
the  "Annex  to  the  Covenant  of  the  League  of  Nations," 
the  British  Empire  stands  as  one  of  the  "original  mem- 
bers"; followed  by  the  "indented"  names  of  Canada, 
Australia,  South  Africa,  New  Zealand,  and  India.  What 
does  that  indentation  mean,  and  where,  if  anywhere,  does 
Great  Britain  appear  in  the  list?  The  indented  states  are 
to  meet  with  Great  Britain  in  1921  to  make  a  new  consti- 
tution for  the  British  Empire.  Will  anyone,  except  per- 
haps Mr.  Smuts,  then  realize  that  they  are  making  a  con- 
stitution not  only  for  the  Empire,  but  also  for  a  section 
of  the  League  of  Nations? 

The  British  Empire  contains  a  quarter  of  the  human 
race,  and  constitutes  a  laboratory  for  the  exploration  of 
many  of  the  most  difficult  problems  of  world  cooperation. 
Shall  we  be  able  to  use  our  imperial  experience  in  the 
development  of  world  cooperation?  Shall  we  be  able  so 
to  improve  the  relations  of  India  and  South  Africa  to  the 
Empire  as  to  assist  in  improving  the  relations  of  India,  or 
South  Africa,  or  China,  or  Syria  to  the  rest  of  mankind? 

Every  nation  appoints  diplomats  and  consuls  and 
foreign  office  secretaries  whose  work  often  affects  other 
populations  even  more  directly  than  their  own  nationals. 
When  the  war  broke  out,  I  was  a  member  of  a  Royal 
Commission  which  was  then  enquiring  into  the  British 
Foreign  Service.  We  had,  I  believe,  in  our  minds  no  very 

215 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

clear  recognition  of  the  fact  that  we  were  discussing  the 
appointment  of  servants  of  mankind  as  well  as  servants 
of  a  nation.  One  of  our  witnesses,  who  had  himself  been 
a  diplomatic  attache,  described  to  us  "the  type  of  man 
who  is  fit  for  this  international  career  called  diplomacy." 
"All  of  this  type  of  man,"  he  said,  "speaking  metaphori- 
cally, speak  the  same  language;  they  have  the  same  habits 
of  thought  and  more  or  less  the  same  points  of  view,  and 
if  anybody  with  a  different  language,  and,  roughly  speak- 
ing, a  different  point  of  view,  came  in,  I  think  he  would 
be  treated  by  the  whole  diplomatic  circle  more  or  less 
with  suspicion."13  This  type  was  then  secured  in  Britain 
by  appointing  to  the  diplomatic  service  only  young  men  of 
good  family,  educated  in  certain  expensive  schools,  whose 
fathers  gave  them  a  large  private  allowance.  The  habits 
of  thought  and  speech  of  these  men  were  those  of  a  polite 
duellist,  and  were  exactly  the  least  likely  to  enable  them 
to  care  for  the  interests  of  other  nations  as  well  as  of  their 
own.  When  it  was  proposed  in  1917  that  British  Labor 
delegates  should  be  permitted  to  go  to  Stockholm,  Lord 
Hugh  Cecil  protested.  "Labor,"  he  said,  "is  quite  unfit 
mentally  and  by  training  to  deal  with  the  questions  that 
will  come  under  discussion,  in  fact,  I  would  as  soon  send 
a  child  of  three  up  in  an  aeroplane  as  let  the  Labor  Party 
send  delegates  to  Stockholm."14  Everyone,  of  course,  in 
the  complexity  of  modern  civilization,  is  intellectually  un- 
fit to  settle  any  question  on  his  own  sole  responsibility. 
The  flying  officer  does  not  start  until  a  mechanic  has 
assured  him  that  his  machine  is  ready,  and  a  meteorolo- 

13  Mr.  Ian  Malcolm,  M.P.,  Appendix  to  Fifth  Report  of  the  Royal 
Commission  on  the  Civil  Service,  question  42,519. 
14 Manchester  Guardian  (August  17,  1917). 

216 


WORLD  COOPERATION 

gist  has  assured  him  that  the  weather  will  be  favorable. 
Our  dependence  on  expert  knowledge  is  more  clear  in 
foreign  politics  than  elsewhere,  because  the  ordinary  voter 
cannot  even  know  the  names  of  the  cities  and  provinces 
whose  fate  he  must  decide.  But  knowledge  is  not  the  only 
factor  in  human  action.  A  Labor  representative — Mr. 
Henderson,  or  Mr.  Clynes,  or  Miss  Bondfield — of  unusual 
natural  and  trained  good-will  and  sympathy,  might,  with 
proper  expert  assistance,  have  made,  from  the  point  of 
view  of  mankind  as  a  whole,  a  much  more  useful  repre- 
sentative of  Britain  at  Stockholm  than  the  most  experi- 
enced of  our  professional  diplomats.15  World  cooperation 
does,  however,  require  that  we  should  think  out,  more 
clearly  than  in  other  political  activities,  the  relation  of 
good-will  to  knowledge.  When  Mr.  Wilson  went  to  Ver- 
sailles, none  of  us  realized  that  the  degree  to  which  Amer- 
ica would  be  able  to  help  mankind  at  a  supreme  crisis 
would  mainly  depend  neither  on  the  good-will  of  Mr. 
Wilson  and  his  assistants,  nor  on  Mr.  Wilson's  tenacity 
of  purpose  and  power  of  speech,  but  on  the  degree  of  his 
ability  to  carry  on  "team-work"  with  a  body  of  responsi- 
ble experts,  and  on  the  existence  of  a  tradition  in  Ameri- 
can diplomacy  which  would  force  him  to  recognize  that 
such  "team-work"  was  necessary. 

In  the  invention  of  supernational  institutions,  there  has 

15  Sir  H.  H.  Johnston  has  always  protested  against  joint  international 
administration  of  dependent  territory,  on  the  ground  that  "The  world 
has  not  yet  developed  an  international  conscience."  The  development  of 
that  conscience  may  perhaps  be  made  a  little  more  possible  in  the  future 
if  officials,  when  learning  the  language  chosen  for  world-intercourse,  study 
great  literature  as  well  as  non-literary  text-books,  and  so  acquire  emo- 
tional as  well  as  intellectual  associations  with  the  words  which  they  will 
use. 

217 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

been  during  the  last  twenty  years  a  clearer  recognition  of 
the  need  of  fundamental  brain-work  than  in  the  adapta- 
tion of  national  principles  and  institutions  to  superna- 
tional  purposes.  In  every  nation  there  have  been  a  few 
men  who  have  worked  at  the  invention  of  international 
courts  and  councils  and  assemblies  almost  as  hard  as  if 
they  were  trying  to  invent  a  new  valve  for  a  petrol-engine. 
But  most  of  the  work  still  remains  to  be  done.  Nations 
will  not  surrender  their  individual  interests  to  the  larger 
interests  of  mankind  unless  they  feel  that  in  the  forma- 
tion of  a  common  decision  their  individual  interests 
have  been  fairly  considered.  If  all  nations  were  of  the 
same  size,  and  were  equally  interested  in  all  questions, 
such  fair  consideration  might  be  represented  by  a  ma- 
jority vote  among  national  representatives.  But  nations 
vary  from  hundreds  of  millions  to  two  or  three  millions, 
and,  so  far,  the  only  method  of  international  cooperation 
which  has  been  agreed  to  is  that  of  theoretical  equality, 
involving  the  practical  dominance  of  the  stronger  powers 
over  the  weaker,  not  by  voting,  but  by  the  constant  threat 
of  force.16  Now,  if  one  looks  up  the  old  codes  of  law 
which  represent  the  submission  of  hitherto  independent 
families  and  tribes  to  courts  and  governments  covering 
new  and  larger  areas,  one  finds  that  their  most  important 
sections  are  certain  numerical  tables,  looking  rather  like 
the  tables  of  weights  and  measures  in  a  child's  arithmetic 
book.  The  earl,  or  bishop,  or  freeman,  or  churl  was  to 
count,  when  testifying,  as  "twelve-handed,"  or  "six- 
handed,"  or  "two-handed,"  and  his  relations  were  to  re- 

10  An  excellent  description  of  the  actual  working  of  a  European  Con- 
gress is  given  in  the  Life  of  Disraeli,  Vol.  VI. 

2I& 


WORLD  COOPERATION 

ceive  so  or  so  many  shillings  wehrgeld  for  his  death.17 
Before  the  acceptance  of  such  numerical  tables  men  who 
desired  peace  had  to  trust  to  the  fact  that  the  strong  and 
dominant  individuals  and  groups  who  might  break  away 
unless  their  strength  and  dominance  were  recognized, 
would  stay  because  they  felt  that  they  could  get  control 
by  the  clumsy  and  dangerous  process  of  instinctive  "lead- 
ership and  obedience."  The  real  making  of  the  German 
Empire  as  an  instrument  of  peaceful  cooperation  among 
the  German  states  came  when  Bismarck  at  Versailles  in- 
duced the  German  princes  to  agree  to  a  table  of  voting- 
power  on  the  Bundesrat  in  which  all  the  subtle  factors  of 
Prussian  dominance  and  Bavarian  and  Saxon  particu- 
larism were  represented  by  the  figures  17  for  Prussia,  6 
for  Bavaria,  and  4  for  Saxony.  The  fact  that  such  a  table 
has  never  yet  been  agreed  to  in  international  organiza- 
tion was  the  main  cause  of  the  failure  of  the  Hague  Con- 
ference of  1907.  Germany  was  determined  never  to  be 
outvoted  on  any  point  by  any  majority,  and  the  numerous 
independent  republics  of  South  and  Central  America 
cared  more  for  their  theoretical  equality  with  Germany, 
or  the  United  States,  or  the  British  Empire,  than  for  the 
advantages  to  be  gained  from  effective  international  co- 
operation. In  the  Postal  Congress  established  in  1874 
the  votes  of  all  nations  are  equal;  but  the  great  nations 
accept  a  position  in  which  they  can  be  outvoted  by  the 
small,  only  because  they  do  not  expect  that  the  small 
nations  will  insist  on  their  full  rights.  In  the  drawing  up 
of  the  Treaty  of  Versailles,  international  cooperation  was 
made  possible  by  the  very  rough  expedient  of  giving  the 
"Big  Four"  or  "Big  Three"  equal  votes,  and  the  smaller 

17  See  e.g.,  Stubbs,  Select  Charters  (8th  Edition,  1895),  p.  65. 

219 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

allies  no  votes  at  all.  The  Covenant  of  the  League  of 
Nations  recognizes  the  inequality  of  nations  by  distin- 
guishing between  "The  Principal  Allied  and  Associated 
Powers";  who  are  always  to  be  on  the  Council;  other 
Great  Powers  who  may  be  asked  to  join  the  Council,  and 
the  smaller  Powers,  from  among  whom  four  representa- 
tives shall  be  chosen  by  the  Assembly  to  sit  on  the  Coun- 
cil. But  since,  in  all  important  matters,  the  proceedings 
of  the  Council,  and,  in  nearly  all  important  matters,  the 
proceedings  of  the  Assembly,  require  unanimity,  the 
whole  proceedings  of  the  League  have  hitherto,  like  those 
of  the  Supreme  Council  of  the  Allies,  been  carried  out  on 
the  old  diplomatic  principle  of  unanimity  secured  by 
threats  of  war  or  disruption  on  the  part  of  individual 
Powers.  It  may  be  that  the  real  beginning  of  a  world- 
constitution  in  which  voting  minorities  will  be  prepared 
to  give  way  to  voting  majorities,  may  come  from  arrange- 
ments for  dealing  with  particular  problems,  the  control 
of  a  waterway,  or  precautions  against  an  epidemic,  or  the 
formation  of  a  court  for  sea-law,  in  which  unequal  voting 
power  (not  always  the  same  for  different  problems)  is 
given  to  different  nations. 

As  I  write,  it  seems  probable  that  the  League  of  Nations 
created  by  the  Treaty  of  Versailles  will  come  to  an  end. 
America  and  Russia  do  not  seem  likely  to  join;  France 
will  exercise  her  veto  on  the  membership  of  Germany; 
and  at  any  moment  the  French  or  Italian  parliament  may 
refuse  to  vote  its  share  in  the  expenses  of  the  secretariat. 
But  if  the  League,  in  spite  of  its  weakness,  still  continues 
to  exist,  it  may  help  in  the  invention  of  expedients  and 
habits  which  will  be  useful  if  ever  mankind  come  to  desire 
a  more  effective  organ  of  world  cooperation.  For  that 

220 


WORLD  COOPERATION 

reason,  one  hopes  that  the  men  whom  the  nations  send 
to  Geneva  will  realize  that  they  are  creating  a  political 
type  which  may  prove  to  be  more  permanent  than  its 
first  embodiment.  A  choice,  for  instance,  hi  League  ad- 
ministration between  various  national  "rules  of  public 
business,"  an  attempted  solution  in  the  Geneva  offices  of 
the  enormously  difficult  intellectual  and  emotional  prob- 
lem of  language,  a  question  of  etiquette,  or  a  decision  to 
found  a  national  or  an  international  club,  may  all  be  fac- 
tors in  making  men  remember  the  League  of  1919  either 
as  an  organization  which,  within  the  limits  allowed  to  it, 
succeeded,  or  as  a  failure  whose  repetition  must  be 
avoided. 

The  uncertainty,  again,  of  the  League's  immediate 
future  ought  not  to  prevent  any  nation  which  has  adopted 
a  policy  of  world  cooperation  from  sending  to  Geneva  the 
men  and  women  who  are  working  at  the  collection  and 
analysis  of  the  statistics  of  disease,  the  psychology  and 
geography  of  industry  and  commerce,  or  the  international 
survey  of  the  heavens.  Mr.  J.  M.  Keynes  has  told  us 
how  even  in  the  nightmare  of  Paris  during  the  spring  of 
1919  he  became  "a  European  in  his  cares  and  outlook."18 
Scientists  as  well  as  diplomats  may  learn  at  Geneva  to 
become  world-men  and  world-women  in  their  cares  and 
outlook. 

18  The  Economic  Consequences  of  the  Peace,  p.  3. 


221 


CHAPTER  X 
CONSTITUTIONAL  MONARCHY 


I  SHALL  not  in  this  chapter  pay  much  attention  to 
"absolute"  or  "personal"  monarchy.  Serious  think- 
ers have  in  the  past  argued  for  that  form  of  govern- 
ment. At  the  cultural  stage  of  mediaeval  Europe  the  ab- 
solute monarch  stimulated  the  same  instinct  of  personal 
obedience  as  did  the  "old  man"  of  the  early  human  or  pre- 
human group,  and  so  enabled  cooperation  to  take  place 
among  people  who  would  otherwise  have  been  helpless 
against  an  organized  enemy;  and  the  fact  that  he  was 
selected  by  primogeniture  helped  to  save  his  subjects  from 
those  periodical  struggles  between  rival  leaders  which 
must  have  been  one  of  the  main  difficulties  of  primitive 
society.  But  mankind  are  now  apparently  agreed  in  re- 
jecting hereditary  personal  monarchy  as  a  practical  means 
of  controlling  the  internal  and  external  problems  of  a 
modern  industrial  nation.  We  have  found  that  the  com- 
plexity and  range  of  modern  government  require  the  in- 
teraction of  many  minds  and  wills,  under  conditions  in- 
consistent with  the  life-long  dominance  of  one  man  or 
woman.  And  the.  same  complexity  and  range  require  that 

222 


CONSTITUTIONAL  MONARCHY 

anyone  who  takes  a  direct  and  leading  part  in  the  govern- 
ment of  a  great  community  or  association  of  communities 
shall  be  above  that  average  of  health  and  intelligence  and 
character  which  alone,  at  the  present  stage  of  eugenic 
art,  can  be  secured  by  hereditary  succession.  The  re- 
cently published  letters  and  telegrams  and  minutes  of  the 
Russian  Czar  and  Czaritsa  and  the  German  Kaiser,  be- 
fore and  after  August,  1914,  disclose  a  danger  which  no 
great  modern  nation  is  likely  voluntarily  to  incur  again. 
Even  in  the  minor  instance  of  the  British  House  of  Lords, 
the  expedient  of  personal  hereditary  power  only  survives 
because  British  statesmen  are  not  agreed  on  any  substi- 
tute for  it. 

Nor  shall  I  pay  much  attention  to  the  forms  of  elective 
monarchy  which  have  been  tried  in  the  Holy  Roman  Em- 
pire, in  Poland,  and  in  France  under  the  Napoleons. 
Elective  monarchy  has  been  generally  found  either  to  lead 
to  hereditary  monarchy,  or  to  involve  most  of  the  dangers 
of  hereditary  power  without  its  advantage  of  security  in 
succession.  The  chief  importance  of  the  idea  of  elective 
monarchy  may,  indeed,  in  the  future  be  found  in  its  influ- 
ence on  the  position  of  the  President  of  the  United  States. 
The  only  form  of  monarchy  which  I  shall  here  consider 
is  the  Constitutional  Monarchy  which  exists  in  the  British 
Empire,  and  in  a  few  countries,  such  as  Italy,  Belgium, 
Norway,  Sweden,  and  Greece,  which  have  for  the  most 
part  deliberately  imitated  the  British  example. 

British  constitutional  monarchy  originated  in  the  dead- 
lock reached  during  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  cen- 
turies between  the  British  Parliament  and  the  British 
Crown.  It  was  defended  by  eighteenth-  and  early  nine- 
teenth-century constitutional  writers  as  a  "balance  of 

223 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

power"  between  two  independent  forces,  a  compromise 
which  left  to  the  monarch  real  but  "limited"  authority.1 
It  was  "limited"  monarchy  in  this  sense  which  was  ac- 
cepted by  the  Kaiser  when  in  April,  1917,  he  promised 
"to  hold  the  just  balance  between  the  people  and  the 
monarchy."  But  such  a  "limited"  monarchy  is  not  what 
most  British  constitutional  writers  since  1832  have  meant 
by  "constitutional"  monarchy.  Our  monarchy  is  now 
generally  described,  not  as  a  means  of  checking  and 
balancing  parliamentary  government,  but  as  a  means  of 
making  parliamentary  government  both  absolute  and  se- 
cure. "The  constitutional  King,"  said  Sir  George  Corne- 
wall  Lewis,  "is  King,  in  order  that  no  one  else  may  be 
King."2  The  appropriate  stimulus,  the  argument  runs, 
of  the  human  instinct  of  obedience  is  a  person.  In  a 
republican  government  the  person  who  will  stimulate  the 
instinct  of  obedience  will  be  the  President  or  prime  minis- 
ter, and  he  will  thereby  be  enabled  to  resist  a  parlia- 
mentary majority.  Constitutional  monarchy,  on  the 
other  hand,  concentrates  the  instinctive  passion  of  obedi- 
ence on  a  person  so  chosen,  trained,  and  situated,  that 
all  his  actions  are  the  actions  of  a  parliamentary  ministry. 
The  constitutional  monarchy  becomes  a  "crowned  re- 
public," or  rather  a  crowned  parliamentary  majority. 

The  clearest  statement  of  this  argument  is  given  in  the 
chapters  on  Monarchy  in  Walter  Bagehot's  English  Con- 

1  See  Blackstone's  Commentaries,  Vol.  I,  Chap.  VII,  "One  of  the  prin- 
cipal bulwarks  of  civil  liberty,  or,  in  other  words  of  the  British  consti- 
tution, [is]  the  limitation  of  the  sovereign's  prerogative  by  bounds  so 
certain  and  notorious,  that  it  is  impossible  he  should  ever  exceed  them, 
without  the  consent  of  the  people." 

2  Quoted  by  Sir  Herbert  Samuel,  Liberalism  (1902),  p.  294. 

224 


CONSTITUTIONAL  MONARCHY 

stitution?  in  which  he  bases  it  on  that  psychological 
analysis  which  he  used  with  all  the  gusto  of  a  scientific 
pioneer  who  was  also  a  born  man  of  letters.  He  insists, 
not  only  on  the  reality  and  force  of  the  instinct  to  obey 
(which,  as  a  Lamarckian,  he  ascribes  to  the  biological 
inheritance  of  acquired  habit)  but  also  on  the  quantitative 
biological  limitations  of  human  imagination  and  knowl- 
edge. "The  French  people,"  he  says,  "were  asked:  Will 
you  be  governed  by  Louis  Napoleon,  or  will  you  be 
governed  by  an  assembly?  The  French  people  said:  We 
will  be  governed  by  the  one  man  we  can  imagine,  and 
not  by  the  many  people  we  cannot  imagine"  (pp.  106- 
107).  "So  long  as  the  human  heart  is  strong  and  the  hu- 
man reason  weak,  royalty  will  be  strong  because  it  ap- 
peals to  diffused  feeling,  and  republics  weak  because  they 
appeal  to  the  understanding"  (p.  112).  Again  and  again, 
Bagehot  employs  the  parallel  of  magic  and  the  mystery 
religions:  "That  which  is  mystical  in  its  claims,  that 
which  is  occult  in  its  mode  of  action  ...  is  the  sort  of 
thing  .  .  .  which  .  .  .  comes  home  to  the  mass  of  men" 
(pp.  75-79).  "The  monarchy  by  its  religious  sanction 
now  confirms  all  our  political  order.  ...  It  gives  now  a 
vast  strength  to  the  entire  constitution,  by  enlisting  on  its 
behalf  the  credulous  obedience  of  enormous  masses"  (p. 
117).  Bagehot  (as  he  wrote  in  his  new  introduction  of 
1872)  was  "exceedingly  afraid  of  the  ignorant  multitude 
of  the  new  constituencies"  created  by  that  parliamentary 
reform  which  was  contemplated  when  the  book  was  writ- 
ten, and  carried  out  in  1867.  Britain  was  "a  community 

3  Originally  written  as  a  series  of  articles  in  the  Fortnightly  Review, 
published  as  a  book  in  1867,  and  republished  with  a  new  introduction  in 
1872.  I  quote  from  Nelson's  edition  in  the  Library  of  Notable  Books. 

225 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

in  which  primitive  barbarism  lay  as  a  recognized  basis  to 
acquired  civilization"  (p.  in).  "Those  who  doubt 
should  go  out  into  their  kitchens"  (p.  77).  "The  real 
question  is,"  he  says,  "will  they  defer  to  wealth  and  rank 
and  to  the  higher  qualities  of  which  these  are  the  rough 
symbols  and  the  common  accompaniments?"  The  con- 
tinued deference  of  the  masses  to  the  classes  could  only 
be  secured  if  the  psychological  analysis  of  British  mon- 
archy were  confined  to  the  Fortnightly  Review  and  to 
literary  treatises  on  the  constitution.  "Its  mystery  is  its 
life.  We  must  not  let  daylight  upon  magic"  (p.  134).* 

Bagehot  wrote  before  the  British  people  had  become 
conscious  that  a  new  Empire  has  taken  the  place  of  that 
which  we  lost  in  1783.  But  since  Disraeli's  premiership 
of  1874-1880  and  the  Jubilee  of  1887,  Bagehot's  psy- 
chological argument  has  constantly  been  used  to  prove 
the  vital  importance  of  the  constitutional  monarchy  to  the 
maintenance  of  the  imperial  connection.  Mr.  H.  A.  L. 
Fisher,  in  his  Republican  Tradition  in  Europe  (1911), 
says,  "the  taste  for  ritual,  for  playthings,  for  make- 
believe,  is  deeply  rooted  in  human  nature,"  that  the 
colonists  are  "fascinated  by  the  pomp  of  an  ancient  and 
dignified  institution  which  they  have  no  means  of  repro- 
ducing in  their  several  communities"  (p.  277).  In  simi- 
lar language  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Webb  wrote  in  1920  that  the 
King's  "duty  as  a  King  is  not  the  exercise  of  govern- 
mental power  in  any  of  its  aspects,  but  .  .  .  the  perform- 
ance of  a  whole  series  of  rites  and  ceremonies,  which  lend 

4  On  the  other  hand,  I  have  heard  socialists  argue  rather  uncon- 
vincingly  as  a  reason  for  maintaining  the  monarchy,  that  the  credulous 
loyalty  of  the  property-owning  classes  may  be  useful  to  a  socialist  gov- 
ernment. 

226 


CONSTITUTIONAL  MONARCHY 

the  charm  of  historic  continuity  to  the  political  institu- 
tions of  the  British  race,  and  go  far  ...  to  maintain 
the  bond  of  union  between  the  races  and  creeds  of  the 
Commonwealth  of  Nations  that  still  styles  itself  the  Brit- 
ish Empire."5 

In  the  general  discussion  of  the  constitution  of  the 
empire  which  arose  out  of  the  Imperial  Conference  of 
1917,  the  Crown  was  continually  spoken  of  as  "the  great 
symbol  of  the  unity  of  the  Empire,"  or  "the  glittering 
emblem  of  our  Imperial  unity."  The  Westminster  Gazette 
(June  20,  1917)  once  more  used  Bagehot's  argument. 
"The  King,  as  Emperor  of  India  and  titular  head  of  the 
Empire,  has  the  immense  advantage  of  commanding  alle- 
giance without  impinging  upon  government;  whereas  an 
elective  President  would  necessarily  have  defined  powers 
and  responsibilities  which,  in  regard  to  the  Empire,  would 
either  have  to  be  openly  and  frankly  nothing,  or  to  en- 
croach at  some  point  or  other  upon  the  spheres  of  the 
self-governing  Dominions." 

Such  being  the  generally  accepted  theory  of  British 
constitutional  monarchy,  how  in  fact  does  that  institution 
work?  The  relation  between  a  British  monarch  and  his 
ministers  at  any  given  moment  is  a  secret  which  is  amaz- 
ingly well  kept,  and  which  only  becomes  known  about  a 
generation  after  the  events;  but  in  so  far  as  the  facts  of 
nineteenth-century  history  are  now  known,  they  indicate 
that  at  no  time  in  that  century  did  the  institution  work 
as  the  theory  required  that  it  should  work.  No  British 
monarch  during  the  nineteenth  century  accepted  the  view 
of  his  position  laid  down  in  the  constitutional  treatises. 

5  S.  and  B.  Webb,  A  Constitution  for  the  Socialist  Commonwealth  of 
Great  Britain  (1920),  pp.  61,  62. 

227 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

Queen  Victoria,  for  instance,  was  during  her  life  believed 
by  the  public  to  be  an  exceptionally  "constitutional"  mon- 
arch; but  the  publication  of  her  letters  for  the  period 
1837-1861,  of  Disraeli's  life  for  1868-1880,  and  many 
other  sources,  now  show  that  neither  she,  nor  her  husband, 
nor  the  Duke  of  Cambridge  as  Commander-in-Chief,  nor 
Baron  Stockmar,  nor  any  other  of  her  personal  advisers, 
ever  acted  on  the  belief  that  she  was  the  figure-head  of  a 
"crowned  republic."  Sir  Sidney  Lee,  who  has  studied 
many  unpublished  documents,  gives  a  typical  description 
of  Queen  Victoria's  action  in  his  account  of  the  Denmark 
question  in  1862-1864.  "She  appealed,"  he  says,  "to  the 
Cabinet  to  aid  her  against  the  Prime  Minister.  She  in- 
vited, too,  in  the  service  of  peace  the  private  support  of 
the  leader  of  the  opposition,  Lord  Derby.  She  hinted 
that  if  Parliament  did  not  adopt  a  pacific  and  neutral 
policy  she  would  have  to  resort  to  a  dissolution,  and  let 
the  country  decide  between  her  and  her  Ministers."6 
Lord  Esher,  who  knew  her  well,  said  in  an  interesting 
lecture  (Times,  March  6,  1909),  "She  never  seemed  to 
doubt  that  the  country  was  hers,  that  the  Ministers  were 
her  Ministers.  .  .  .  Ministers  and  Parliaments  existed  to 
assist  her  to  govern.  .  .  .  This  outlook,  with  its  pathetic 
earnestness,  and  at  times  almost  tragic  persistence,  was 
the  source  of  the  Queen's  influence,  and  sometimes  the 
cause  of  her  few  mistakes."  At  the  end  of  the  lecture  he 
says,  "We  owe  to  Queen  Victoria  the  reinstatement  of  the 
monarchical  principle  in  the  eyes  of  all  grave  and  earnest 
men."  Sometimes,  as  in  the  enormously  important  case 
of  the  threatened  war  with  the  United  States  over  the 
Mason  and  Slidell  incident  in  1861,  the  Queen  and  her 

6  Life  of  Queen  Victoria,  p.  350. 

228 


CONSTITUTIONAL  MONARCHY 

personal  advisers  were  in  the  right,  and  her  ministers 
were  either  persuaded  by  her  at  the  time  that  they  were 
in  the  wrong,  or  came  afterwards  to  acknowledge  that  it 
was  so.  Most  students  would,  however,  now  say  that  she 
was  more  often  in  the  wrong,  especially  when,  as  in  her 
determined  opposition  to  the  unity  of  Italy,  she  was  influ- 
enced by  the  Coburg  family  tradition.  Very  little  is  now 
known  about  the  political  activities  of  Edward  VII  or 
George  V,  but  certain  comments  in  the  newspapers  on 
British  action  during  the  war  in  respect  of  the  Czar  of 
Russia,  the  King  of  Greece,  and  the  royal  telegram  to 
Marshal  Pilsudski  at  the  time  of  the  Polish  offensive  of 
1920,  indicated  that  complaints  may  have  been  made  of 
a  court  policy  in  foreign  affairs  sometimes  separable  from 
that  of  the  Prime  Minister.7 

It  may  be  contended  that  as  against  a  united  cabinet 
a  British  court  policy  must  always  be  helpless.  But  cabi- 
nets are  seldom  united,  and  in  any  case  the  process  of 
wearing  down  the  determination  of  a  strong-willed  mon- 
arch involved  during  Queen  Victoria's  reign  an  almost 
incredible  expenditure  of  time  and  temper.  Even  Disraeli 
once  complained  that  the  Queen  wrote  to  him  every  day 
and  telegraphed  every  hour.8  When  it  was  suggested  that 
Lord  Derby  should  succeed  Disraeli  as  Premier  in  1876 
(a  change  which  would  have  gone  far  to  save  us  from  the 

7  See  e.g.,  Evening  Standard  (October  25,  1918)  and  Westminster  Ga- 
zette (July  22,  1920).    M.  Venezelos,  New  Europe  (March  29,  1917),  p. 
326,  complained  that  the  Allied  Powers  had  expressly  stipulated  that  his 
movement  "should  not  be  antidynastic." 

8  Childers,  who  was  Secretary  for  War  during  the  dispatch  of  the 
Egyptian  expedition  of   1882,  mentions  that  in   one   day  he   received 
seventeen  letters  from  the  Queen  or  her  private  secretary  (Life  of  Hugh 
C.  E.  Childers,  Vol.  II,  p.  104). 

229 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

results  of  "backing  the  wrong  horse"  in  the  Near  East) 
Lord  Derby  gave  as  his  first  reason  for  refusing  that  "he 
could  never  manage  Her  Majesty."9 

Disraeli  himself  always  believed  that  the  monarchy 
should  be  "real,"  always  protested  against  the  "Venetian 
Oligarchy"  of  parliamentary  absolutism,  and  looked  on 
the  "management"  of  the  Queen  as  one  of  the  most  im- 
portant as  well  as  the  most  amusing  of  his  duties.10  Lib- 
eral ministers  on  the  other  hand,  constantly  declared  that 
the  personal  prerogative  of  the  monarch  did  not  exist,  and 
constantly  compromised  with  it.11 

But  even  the  power  of  a  united  cabinet,  supported  by 
a  united  parliamentary  majority,  to  override  the  will  of 
the  monarch  depends  on  the  validity  of  the  two  "con- 
ventions of  the  constitution"  which  forbid  the  monarch  to 
retain  a  ministry  that  has  lost  the  confidence  of  the  House 
of  Commons,  and  require  the  monarch  to  assent  to  any 
law  that  has  passed  both  Houses.  No  British  monarch 
has  retained  in  office  a  ministry  against  a  definitely  hostile 
vote  of  the  House  of  Commons  since  1784,  or  has  refused 

9  Life  of  Disraeli,  Vol.  V,  p.  495.     Gladstone  in  a  letter  to  Bright 
(November  28,  1879)  which  was  intended  to  explain  his  position  as  to 
the  acceptance  of  the  premiership,  gave,  as  a  possible  reason  against 
acceptance,  "Nothing  could  be  so  painful,  I  may  almost  say  so  odious  to 
me,  as  to  force  myself  or  be  forced,  upon  the  Queen,"  who  notoriously 
detested  him  (Life,  by  Morley,  Vol.  II,  p.  599). 

10  After  Disraeli's  victory  at  the  election  of  1874,  Lady  Ely  wrote  to 
him  from  Court,  "My  dear  mistress  will  be  very  happy  to  see  you  again. 
...  I  think  you  understand  her  so  well,  besides  appreciating  her  noble 
fine  qualities"  (the  italics  are  mine)   (Disraeli,  Life,  Vol.  V,  p.  236). 

11  E.g.,  Gladstone,  Gleanings  of  Past  Years,  Vol.  I,  p.  233.    "It  would 
be  an  evil  and  perilous  day  for  the  Monarchy  were  the  prospective  pos- 
sessor of  the  Crown  to  assume  or  claim  for  himself  final  or  preponderat- 
ing, or  even  independent  power  in  any  one  department  of  the  State." 

230 


CONSTITUTIONAL  MONARCHY 

to  assent  to  a  law  passed  by  parliament  since  1707.  But, 
since  the  law-courts  would  probably  recognize  the  legal 
right  of  the  monarch  to  do  both  of  these  things,  the  only 
reliable  safeguard  against  a  breach  of  either  convention  is 
an  agreement  of  all  political  parties  that  no  minister 
should  accept  responsibility  for  any  act  which  is  (in  the 
sense  of  either  convention)  "unconstitutional,"  and  that, 
in  particular,  no  War  Minister  should  make  himself  re- 
sponsible for  a  refusal  of  the  army  to  carry  out  a  parlia- 
mentary policy.  If  one  of  the  great  British  parties  de- 
clares that  it  is  not  bound  by  such  an  agreement,  both 
conventions,  ipso  facto,  come  to  an  end. 

Now  one  of  the  effects  of  the  severe  social  and  political 
struggle  which  followed  in  Britain  the  Liberal  victory  of 
1906  was  that  the  Conservative  Party  denied,  in  a  formal 
declaration  of  its  leader,  its  acceptance  of  the  convention 
which  forbids  the  monarch  to  veto  laws  which  have 
passed  through  their  legally  necessary  stages  in  parlia- 
ment. Mr.  Bonar  Law,  speaking  as  leader  of  his  party 
at  Edinburgh  on  January  24,  1913,  said,  "Suppose  the 
Home  Rule  Bill,  which  involves  as  you  know  the  use  of 
British  troops  to  drive  loyal  men  out  of  our  community — 
suppose  that  Bill  had  passed  through  all  its  stages  and 
was  waiting  for  the  Sovereign  to  decide  whether  or  not 
it  would  become  law.  What  then  would  be  the  position 
of  the  Sovereign  of  this  country?  Whatever  he  did,  half 
of  his  people  would  think  he  had  failed  in  his  duty.  If 
he  refused  to  give  his  assent  to  it  the  whole  Radical  Party 
would  be  yelping  at  his  heels  on  the  ground  that  it  was 
withheld  in  an  unconstitutional  way;  if  he  did  give  his 
assent  to  it,  then  one  half  of  his  people  would  say  he  was 
giving  his  assent  to  a  vital  measure  of  which  half  the 

231 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

people  did  not  approve,  and  that  in  such  circumstances 
the  assent  ought  not  to  be  given."12  That  speech  de- 
stroyed one  of  the  two  main  conventions  of  our  constitu- 
tion. It  made  it  certain  that  in  any  future  political  crisis 
in  which  the  monarch  personally  sympathized  with  the 
view  of  a  socially  and  politically  powerful  minority,  his 
possible  refusal  to  assent  to  a  law  "which  had  passed 
through  all  its  stages"  would  in  future  be  a  vital  element 
in  the  calculations  of  all  statesmen. 

Lord  Halsbury,  though  not,  like  Mr.  Bonar  Law,  the 
responsible  leader  of  his  party,  held  in  1913  an  important 
position  as  having  been  Lord  Chancellor  for  seventeen 
years,  and  as  having  during  that  period  filled  vacancies 
among  the  judges  who  would  have  to  interpret  the  con- 
stitution with  lawyers  whose  political  opinions  were  as 
far  as  possible  identical  with  his  own.  He  said  on  Novem- 
ber 5,  1913,  "It  was  said  that  the  King's  veto  was  abol- 
ished two  hundred  or  three  hundred  years  ago.  .  .  .  It  is 
all  nonsense  to  talk  about  the  King's  veto  being  abolished. 
He  did  not  assent  to  that  argument.  He  was  of  opinion — 
and  he  apologized  for  saying  so — that  it  was  part  of  the 
British  constitution  that  if  something  was  to  become  law 
and  to  bind  their  liberties  that  something  must  be  assented 
to  by  the  King,  Lords,  and  Commons"  (Times,  Novem- 
ber 6,  1913).  Lord  Halsbury  would  probably  say  that 
it  was  the  Liberals  who  destroyed  the  constitutional  con- 
vention when  they  passed  the  Parliament  Act  (by  a  threat 
to  create  Peers)  in  1911.  But  the  important  thing  is  not 
the  moral  responsibility  of  this  party  or  that,  but  the  fact 
that  the  convention  that  the  King  may  not  on  his  own 

12  Times  (January  25,  1913). 

232 


CONSTITUTIONAL  MONARCHY 

judgment  veto  legislation  is  no  longer  generally  accepted, 
and  therefore  no  longer  exists.13 

Mr.  Bonar  Law,  in  his  speech  of  January  24,  1913, 
gave,  as  the  first  reason  in  his  argument  that  the  King 
should  reject  the  Home  Rule  Bill,  the  fact  that  the  Bill 
involved  "the  use  of  British  troops  to  drive  loyal  men  out 
of  our  community."  Since  the  Restoration  of  Charles  II 
it  has  been  held  by  most  British  statesmen  that  the  obedi- 
ence of  the  army  to  the  civil  power  is  best  secured  by  the 
concentration  of  the  instincts  and  habits  of  military 
loyalty  and  discipline  on  the  person  of  the  monarch. 
Some  observers  of  the  process  by  which  the  new  armies 
of  1914-1916  were  formed  claimed  a  real  effectiveness  for 
this  policy.  "Ian  Hay,"  the  clever  author  of  The  First 
Hundred  Thousand,  ends  his  description  of  the  con- 
version of  a  typical  radical  private  into  an  enthusiastic 
devotee  of  the  monarchy  with  the  words,  "and  yet  there 
are  people  who  tell  us  that  the  formal  *O.  H.  M.  S.'  [On 
His  Majesty's  Service]  is  a  mere  relic  of  antiquity."1* 

13  The  effect  of  the  belief  that  this  convention  is  no  longer  valid  was 
seen  in  the  Home  Rule  crisis  of  July  20,  1914,  when  the  consideration  of 
the  "Amending  Bill"  was  suddenly  postponed,  and  a  conference  of  party 
leaders  called  by  the  King  was  substituted.    The  Daily  News  (July  21, 
1914)  said  that  "it  is  stated  by  those  who  have  the  best  means  of  know- 
ing the  King's  mind  that  he  now  intends  to  withhold  his  assent  from 
the    Home    Rule    Bill   unless    an    amending   Bill    is    presented   to    him 
along  with  it."     The  parliamentary  correspondent  of  the  Daily  News 
said  (July  21)  that  "in  the  gallery  of  peers  sat  ...  Lord  Stamfordham, 
the  private  secretary  of  the  King,  whose  day  it  was."    Lord  Courtney  in 
the  House  of  Lords,  July  20,  said,  "I  am  afraid  this  step  will  be  viewed 
by  the  world  at  large  as  something  like  a  supersession  of  Parliament." 
The  ministry  accepted  responsibility  for  the  King's  action;  but  one  may 
doubt  whether,  if  the  convention  against  the  royal  veto  on  legislation 
had  been  intact,  the  postponement  would  have  taken  place. 

14  The  First  Hundred  Thousand,  p.  24. 

233 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

When,  as  I  have  already  described,15  the  officers  of  the 
Curragh  camp  declared  themselves  in  1914  unwilling  to 
march  into  Ulster,  the  Liberal  ministry  seems  to  have  de- 
cided to  use  the  personal  interposition  of  the  King  for  the 
restoration  of  military  discipline.  It  will  not  be  known  to 
more  than  perhaps  forty  people  for  the  next  twenty  years 
what  really  happened  in  Buckingham  Palace  on  March 
23,  1914 — how  the  "terms  of  peace"  were  drawn  up,  and 
under  what  circumstances  they  were  repudiated  by  the 
Cabinet  at  the  cost  of  the  resignation  of  the  Secretary  for 
War  and  the  military  members  of  the  Army  Council. 
One  guesses  that  the  King  may  have  shown  a  high  degree 
of  personal  good  sense;  and  that  if  George  V  had  been 
born  with  the  temperament  of  George  III,  or  with  that 
of  the  German  Kaiser,  the  injury  done  to  the  British  Con- 
stitution both  then  and  throughout  the  long  crisis  of  1910- 
1914  might  have  been  very  much  greater  than  it  was.  But 
the  whole  incident  made  it  clear  that  while  in  future  it 
may  be  possible  for  us  to  argue  either  that  unrestricted 
parliamentary  government  is  the  best  constitution  for  our 
modern  needs,  or  that  a  "balance"  between  the  power  of 
parliament  and  the  personal  power  of  the  monarchy  is 
better,  yet  there  is  one  argument  which  it  will  be  impossi- 
ble for  us  to  use — that  our  existing  constitution  makes 
parliamentary  government  in  a  serious  crisis  both  abso- 
lute and  secure.16  Not  only  have  responsible  leaders 

16  See  Chap.  VI,  p.  137. 

16  Colonel  Repington,  long  known  as  military  member  of  the  Times 
staff,  says  in  his  published  diary  (The  First  World  War,  1920),  "Had  a 
talk  with  Carson  about  the  Ulster  business.  He  told  me  how  near  we 
were  to  an  explosion,  that  the  government  had  determined  to  arrest  the 
chief  leaders,  that  he  had  arranged  to  send  one  word,  H.X.,  over  the  wire 
to  Belfast,  and  this  was  to  be  the  signal  for  the  seizure  of  the  Customs 

234 


CONSTITUTIONAL  MONARCHY 

denied  the  supposed  restrictions  on  royal  power,  but  in 
times  of  national  excitement  less  responsible  politicians 
will  always  be  found  ready  to  appeal  to  the  personal 
loyalty  of  the  army  for  the  monarch  as  a  means  of  oppos- 
ing a  parliamentary  majority.  During  the  war  the  news- 
paper most  read  by  British  soldiers  was  Mr.  Horatio 
Bottomley's  John  Bull,  and  Mr.  Bottomley  thought  it 
good  policy  on  March  4,  1916,  to  issue  over  his  own  name 
a  flaming  appeal  headed,  "Let's  have  a  Dictator!  Sus- 
pend the  constitution — Let  the  King  be  King."17 

If  one  looks  away  from  Britain  to  the  states  which  have 
copied  the  British  political  model,  one  finds  that  "consti- 
tutional" monarchy  has  not  in  times  of  crisis  remained 
"constitutional."  In  Italy,  Holland,  Roumania,  Bulgaria, 
Sweden,  and  Norway,  during  the  war,  no  actual  conflict 
took  place  between  crown  and  parliament,  but  in  all  these 
countries,  except  perhaps  Norway,  the  personal  power  of 
the  crown  seems  to  have  been  strengthened  by  conditions 
arising  out  of  the  war.  In  Bulgaria  the  King  seems  to 
have  been  practically  his  own  Prime  Minister,  and  in 
Greece  a  King  whose  constitutional  position  was  obviously 
copied  from  that  of  the  British  crown  was  able  with  the 

throughout  Ulster.  He  called  to  see  the  King,  and  told  Stamfordham 
[Lord  Stamfordham,  private  secretary  to  the  King]  exactly  what  was 
going  to  happen,  and  the  arrest  of  the  leaders  was  promptly  stopped." 
If  Colonel  Repington  accurately  reports  Sir  Edward  Carson,  the  question 
whether  the  King  did  or  did  not  stop  the  Liberal  plans  for  dealing  with 
the  Ulster  rebellion  is  not  much  more  important  than  the  fact  that  Sir 
Edward  Carson  acted  on  the  expectation  that  he  would  do  so,  and  on 
the  belief  that  he  had  done  so. 

17  It  was  interesting,  on  the  other  hand,  to  notice  that  during  Septem- 
ber, 1920,  many  writers  in  the  Liberal  papers  urged  the  King,  in  the 
question  of  the  hunger-strike  of  the  Lord  Mayor  of  Cork,  to  use  against 
the  Cabinet  the  prerogative  of  mercy. 

235 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

support  of  army  officers  appointed  by  himself  to  oppose, 
for  years,  M.  Venezelos  and  a  large  majority  of  the 
Chamber. 

Outside  the  British  Empire,  indeed,  the  experience  of 
the  war  seems  to  have  produced  a  wide-spread  disbelief 
in  the  likelihood  of  the  sincere  maintenance  of  the  con- 
vention of  constitutional  monarchy  by  a  monarch  who 
feels  himself  strong  enough  to  disregard  it,  and  a  general 
preference  by  opponents  of  personal  government  for  a 
republic  rather  than  a  constitutional  monarchy.  Mr. 
Fisher  could  write  in  1911  in  his  Republican  Tradition  in 
Europe,  "There  can  be  little  question  that,  since  1870, 
the  cause  of  republicanism  has  made  no  substantial  prog- 
ress in  Europe.  France  is  still  the  only  great  European 
Republic  ..."  (p.  270),  and  again,  "The  accepted  for- 
mula of  political  progress  seems,  if  we  are  to  be  guided  by 
the  recent  examples  of  Russia  and  Turkey,  to  be  constitu- 
tional monarchy  rather  than  republicanism"  (p.  284).  In 
1920,  outside  the  British  Empire,  not  more  than  perhaps 
a  fifth  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  globe  are  living  under 
monarchical  institutions  of  any  kind,  and  all  movements 
towards  monarchical  restoration  seem  to  aim  not  at  con- 
stitutional monarchy  but  at  absolute  monarchy  based  on 
military  power.  In  1917  a  well-known  writer  in  the  Man- 
chester Guardian  asked  whether  we  thought  that  the  Rus- 
sian progressives  would  be  able  to  "launch  into  the  Rus- 
sian world  our  weird  metaphysics  of  limited  monarchy."18 

But  obvious  as  are  the  difficulties  and  dangers  in  the 
practical  working  of  the  British  expedient  of  constitu- 
tional monarchy,  our  ultimate  verdict  on  that  expedient 

18  Letter  signed  H.  (Manchester  Guardian,  March  22,  1917). 

236 


CONSTITUTIONAL  MONARCHY 

must  depend,  I  believe,  mainly  upon  our  estimate  of  its 
central  idea — the  monarchy  as  a  symbol  by  means 
of  which  the  instinct  of  personal  obedience  can  be  used 
to  support  an  impersonal  government.  This  problem  is 
really  one  of  the  relative  advantages  and  disadvantages 
of  two  kinds  of  symbols.  As  long  as  man,  or  any  other 
animal,  is  dealing  only  with  objects  coming  directly 
within  the  range  of  his  senses,  and  directly  stimulating  his 
instincts,  no  symbolism  is  required.  But  when  man 
entered  into  relation  with  things  too  large  or  too  distant 
for  direct  perception,  he  had  to  represent  these  things  to 
himself  and  others  by  symbols,  which  were  usually  either 
words  or  pictures,  or  tangible  specimens  of  the  things. 
If  an  Italian,  for  instance,  in  the  reign  of  Augustus  bought 
a  field,  he  might  receive  from  the  seller  either  a  clod  of 
earth  from  the  field,  or  a  written  or  oral  contract  of  sale. 
The  clod  of  earth  had,  as  a  symbol,  the  advantage  that  it 
directly  stimulated  in  a  stupid  or  ignorant  man  the  in- 
stinct of  ownership;  though  it  had  the  disadvantage  that 
it  might  behave  like  a  clod  as  well  as  like  a  symbol,  might, 
for  instance,  turn  itself  into  mud  or  dust.  A  verbal  con- 
tract involved  a  severer  initial  effort  of  imagination;  but, 
when  once  the  effort  had  been  made,  it  was  easier  to  turn 
the  contract-symbol  than  the  clod-symbol  into  the  de- 
tailed knowledge  of  the  relationship  of  the  purchaser  to 
the  land  which  constituted  in  both  cases  the  "meaning"  of 
the  symbol;  and  unless  he  understood  that  meaning  the 
purchaser  was  not  likely  to  act  wisely.  Primitive  man,  in 
propitiating  the  gods,  used  the  scapegoat  as  a  symbol  of 
the  herd,  and  the  priest-king  as  a  symbol  of  the  tribe;  but 
the  connotative  words  "herd"  and  "tribe,"  when  he  learnt 
to  use  them,  were,  even  though  they  made  a  less  direct 

237 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

and  vivid  appeal  to  his  instincts,  more  effective  instru- 
ments for  the  daily  work  of  pasturage  and  government. 

Now  Bagehot's  constitutional  monarch  represents  the 
same  psychological  expedient  as  the  clod  or  the  scape- 
goat, and  is,  in  fact,  the  direct  descendant  of  the  symbolic 
priest-king.  Mr.  Balfour,  speaking  on  July  22,  1910,  said 
that  the  President  of  a  federal  British  Republic  would 
"represent  the  abstraction  of  a  constitution  and  not  the 
personal  head  of  an  empire."  If  Mr.  Balfour  had  been 
careful  to  compare  like  things  to  like,  he  would  have  said 
that  the  words  "British  Commonwealth"  would  be  an 
abstraction  of  a  community,  and  that  a  constitutional 
monarch  is  a  specimen  of  the  community  used  as  a  symbol 
for  it.  The  first  advantage  of  the  monarch  as  symbol  is 
that,  like  other  specimen-symbols,  he  requires  no  effort  of 
the  imagination;  the  words  "British  Commonwealth" 
have  to  be  explained  to  a  child  of  six,  and  the  sight  of 
the  King  has  not.  The  second  advantage  is  that  the  sight 
of  him  directly  and  easily  stimulates  instinctive  love  and 
loyalty.  But  one  disadvantage  of  the  monarch  as  symbol 
is  that  he  may  behave  as  a  human  being  as  well  as  a  sym- 
bol; he  may  be  insane  like  George  III,  or  self-willed  like 
Victoria.  And  another  disadvantage  is  that  a  man  who 
only  knows  that  he  has  seen  and  loves  the  King  has  not 
such  a  useful  working  idea  of  his  relation  to  his  govern- 
ment as  has  a  man  who  has  learnt  the  meaning  of  the 
words  British  Commonwealth. 

I  am  here,  of  course,  oversimplifying  the  psychological 
facts;  for  many  of  those  who  consciously  know  the  mon- 
arch to  be  a  symbol  may  yet  feel  personal  loyalty  to  him 
as  a  symbolic  person.  Disraeli  saw  political  facts  as 
clearly  as  any  statesman  of  his  time,  and  yet  he  could 

238 


CONSTITUTIONAL  MONARCHY 

work  himself  up  into  a  passion  of  quasi-personal  loyalty 
for  Queen  Victoria.  But  these  more  complicated  states 
of  mind  are  apt  (like  "eating  caviare  upon  principle")19 
to  lose  much  of  the  driving  force  of  simple  instinctive  re- 
action, and  may  be  destroyed  by  a  sudden  sense  of  ab- 
surdity. Carlyle's  hero  in  Sartor  Resartus  only  laughed 
once  in  his  life — at  the  idea  of  men's  conscious  loyalty  to 
a  "Cast-metal  King."  It  is  more  important  that  such 
complicated  states  of  mind  are  apt  to  encourage  among 
intelligent  people  an  evasion  of  the  real  difficulties  in  any 
constitutional  relation. 

All  these  advantages  and  disadvantages  may  be  clearly 
seen  in  the  use  of  the  British  monarch  as  a  "symbol  of 
unity"  for  the  British  Empire.  The  crowds  of  Sydney 
and  Ottawa  were  moved  in  1920  to  enthusiastic  affection 
by  the  sight  of  the  Prince  of  Wales,  who  was  both  a  sym- 
bol of  the  empire,  and  an  unusually  attractive  specimen 
of  it.  But  at  the  Imperial  Conference  of  1921,  the 
premiers  of  Great  Britain  and  the  Dominions  and  the  rep- 
resentatives of  India  will  have  to  turn  both  their  specimen- 
symbols  and  their  word-symbols  of  the  empire  into  the 
best  "meanings"  they  can,  and  then  take  action  which 
will  affect  a  quarter  of  the  human  beings  on  the  globe. 
They  will  have  to  decide  whether  the  imperial  connection 
shall  be  (in  the  phrase  of  the  Westminster  Gazette} 
"openly  and  frankly  nothing,"  or  "an  encroachment  at 
some  point  or  another"  upon  the  independence  of  its  parts, 
with  no  third  alternative.  Hitherto  the  constitutional 
monarchy  has  enabled  them  to  avoid  the  painful  choice 
between  eating  their  cake  and  having  it.  Now  that  the 
choice  has  to  be  made,  I  think  that  our  imperial  states- 

19  See  my  Human  Nature  in  Politics,  p.  183. 

239 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

men  and  their  constituents  would  have  been  in  a  better 
condition  to  make  it,  if  the  word-symbol  "British  Com- 
monwealth" had  been  in  more  general  use,  and  if  we  had 
been  less  insistent  in  using  the  monarch  as  a  sacred  and 
all-sufficing  specimen-symbol. 

Sometimes,  of  course,  insistence  on  the  supreme  impor- 
tance of  the  Crown  as  "the  keystone  of  the  imperial  arch" 
is  caused  by  a  belief  that  time  is  a  safer  guide  than 
thought.  I  have  the  greatest  possible  admiration  for  the 
keenness  and  objectivity  of  Mr.  Smuts's  mind;  but  I  al- 
ways feel  that  beneath  his  real  enthusiasm  for  the  Crown 
as  an  institution  lies  an  expectation  that  the  Crown  will 
hide  from  statesmen  and  voters  in  Great  Britain  the  de- 
velopment of  the  Empire  on  lines  which  they  might  refuse 
consciously  to  accept.  And  when  British  Ministers  echo 
his  words,  I  sometimes  feel  that  they  also  are  expecting 
that,  if  we  put  off  the  necessity  of  decision,  imperial  de- 
velopment will  take  place  on  lines  different  from  those  de- 
sired by  Mr.  Smuts.  Time,  however,  on  this  question  is 
running  out. 

But  it  is  in  world  cooperation  rather  than  imperial  co- 
operation that  the  advantage  of  verbal  abstraction  over  the 
symbolic  specimen  is  greatest.  I  have  already  argued  that 
the  possibility  of  world-peace  founded  on  world-purpose 
depends  mainly  on  our  ability  to  calculate  the  effects  of 
world-war,  and  to  derive  a  sufficiently  powerful  impulse 
from  our  calculations.  In  world  cooperation  as  in  im- 
perial cooperation,  and  in  the  internal  cooperation  of 
single  nations,  the  practical  wisdom  of  our  decisions 
largely  depends  on  the  truth  of  those  pictures  of  our  fel- 
lows which  we  use  both  for  our  conscious  and  for  our 
subconscious  thought.  A  Middlesbrough  iron-moulder 

240 


CONSTITUTIONAL  MONARCHY 

will  be  more  likely  to  vote  for  a  kind  and  wise  policy  in 
British  India  if  he  thinks  of  India,  not  as  "the  brightest 
jewel  in  the  British  Crown,"  but  as  three  hundred  million 
human  beings  for  whose  fate  he  has  his  share  of  personal 
responsibility,  who  are  troubled  each  week,  more  keenly 
than  he  is  troubled,  about  food  and  clothing  and  housing, 
and  who  sometimes  feel,  though  less  often  than  he  feels, 
the  vague  stirrings  of  political  and  social  hope.  And  be- 
cause the  racial  and  cultural  types  of  mankind  are  unlike 
as  well  as  like  each  other,  and  a  true  realization  of  unlike- 
ness  may  stimulate  the  instinct  of  hatred,  world-peace 
also  depends  on  the  voter's  ability  to  think  of  all  the 
eighteen  hundred  millions  of  mankind  as  a  part  of  that 
universe  for  which,  as  a  whole,  he  feels  pity  or  hope  but 
seldom  hatred.  It  will  be  better  still  if  he  conceives,  as 
the  average  civilized  man  can  now  be  taught  to  conceive, 
of  our  social  heritage  of  civilization  as  a  possession  to 
which  all  races  can  contribute,  and  from  which  all  can 
draw.  It  is  easier  to  train  a  recruit  or  a  boy-scout  to 
cheer  for  King  and  Country  than  to  make  him  understand 
that  a  man  who  believes  that  his  national  culture  is  of 
value  to  mankind  may  do  well  to  face  death  rather  than 
allow  it  to  be  destroyed.  But  in  the  longer  processes  of 
history  it  is  the  soldiers  who,  as  Cromwell  said,  "know 
what  they  are  fighting  for  and  love  what  they  know" 
that  will  do  the  most  lasting  service  to  the  world,  and 
will,  when  they  fight,  leave  least  bitterness  behind.  It  is 
a  real  hindrance  to  such  a  conception  of  the  relation  of 
men  to  mankind  when  the  citizens  of  one  state  think, 
whether  truly  or  falsely,  of  other  states  not  as  commu- 
nities of  men  like  themselves,  but  as  the  obedient  subjects 
of  a  different  monarch. 

241 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

We  cannot  use  a  symbol  which  deceives  our  own  people 
without  the  danger  that  it  may  deceive  others.  If  the 
German  liberals  of  1849  had  succeeded  in  making  a  Ger- 
man Federal  Republic,  French  and  British  liberals  would 
have  found  it  much  easier  to  popularize  in  Britain  the 
idea  of  a  Europe  inhabited  by  human  beings  who  could 
all  help  or  hurt  each  other.  And  the  German  social 
democrats  and  progressives  might  have  had  more  influ- 
ence over  German  foreign  policy  before  the  war  if  so 
many  Germans  had  not  thought  of  Britain  as  an  embodi- 
ment of  the  personal  "encircling-policy"  of  Edward  VII. 
Kant  and  Mazzini  tried  to  analyze  the  moral  and  intel- 
lectual conditions  of  permanent  peace,  and  they  both  stip- 
ulated that  the  European  nations  should  think  of  them- 
selves and  be  thought  of  by  others  as  alike  in  that  they 
were  republics.  A  real  understanding  between  Britain 
and  America  is  made  difficult  because  so  many  Americans 
are  still  able  at  presidential  elections  to  hate  Britain  as 
a  brutal  monarchy;  and  the  sympathy  of  mind  and  feel- 
ing between  British  and  Chinese  democrats  which  is  one 
of  the  splendid  possibilities  of  civilization  would  be  made 
more  possible  if  the  "weird  metaphysics"  of  our  constitu- 
tion were  out  of  the  way. 

No  British  writer  can  ignore  the  strength  of  the  British 
political  tradition  that  any  institution  whose  discussion 
arouses  passion,  and  which  is  working  without  obvious 
and  immediate  bad  results  should  be  left  undiscussed. 
But  the  whole  of  this  book  is  meaningless  if  the  effort  re- 
quired to  make  our  own  working  conception  of  the  world 
resemble  as  near  as  may  be  the  facts  is  not  as  worth 
while  in  politics  as  it  is  in  the  natural  sciences.  Especially 
is  it  true  that  "democracy,"  in  Sir  Arthur  Steel-Maitland's 

242 


CONSTITUTIONAL  MONARCHY 

words,  "will  only  be  equal  to  its  task  if  it  can  see  through 
make-believes  to  reality."20 

British  democrats  should  therefore,  I  believe,  at  least 
insist  on  knowing  what  the  personal  prerogative  power  of 
the  Crown  at  this  moment  is.  "The  Queen,"  said  Bage- 
hot,  "has  a  hundred  .  .  .  powers,  which  waver  between 
reality  and  desuetude,  and  which  would  cause  a  protracted 
and  very  interesting  legal  argument  if  she  tried  to  exer- 
cise them.  Some  good  lawyer  ought  to  write  a  careful 
book  to  say  which  of  these  powers  really  are  usable 
and  which  are  obsolete."21  We  should  not  have  to  wait 
till  those  powers  are  tested,  as  they  were  in  March, 
1914,  by  an  actual  crisis.  Suggestions,  again,  are  often 
made  which  would  strengthen  either  the  personal  preroga- 
tive or  the  prerogative  atmosphere,  as  when  Sir  Sidney 
Low  urged  (Times,  February  17,  1916)  that  "Windsor 
should  be  the  seat  of  the  proposed  Imperial  Parliament." 
In  the  British  War  Office  and  Foreign  Office  steps  are 
daily  being  taken  which  either  strengthen  or  weaken  the 
tradition  that  the  army  and  the  diplomatic  corps  have  a 
different  relation  to  the  person  of  the  monarch  than  have 
other  forms  of  government  service. 

And,  even  if  any  public  agitation  of  the  question  can 
be  postponed  without  loss,  the  task  of  invention  cannot. 
Extraordinarily  little  thought  has  been  given  to  the  ques- 
tion of  non-monarchical  executive  government.  No  one 
has  even  begun  to  compare  the  working  of  the  various 
republican  institutions  which  have  been  set  up  since  the 
war.  It  ought  to  be  possible  to  invent  some  form  that 
would  work  more  smoothly  in  internal  politics  than  either 

20  Times  (November  21,  1916). 

21  English  Constitution,  p.  133. 

243 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

the  plebiscitary  presidency  of  the  United  States  or  the 
particular  kind  of  parliamentary  presidency  which  is 
found  in  France,  and  which  could  be  applied  to  the  new 
problem  of  the  British  Empire.  Meanwhile  if  the  new 
republics  all  over  the  world  desire  to  make  use  of  the 
primitive  instinct  of  personal  loyalty  they  can  do  so  more 
safely  by  the  expedient  of  personification  than  by  the 
older  expedient  of  a  symbolic  person.  The  third  French 
Republic  has  proved  enormously  more  stable  than  its 
predecessors  because  the  ordinary  Frenchman  directs  his 
affections  rather  to  the  personification  of  La  Ripublique 
than  to  the  person  of  the  President.  And  at  this  mo- 
ment of  the  world's  history  anything  which  increases  the 
prestige  of  the  idea  of  majority  rule  against  the  disruptive 
forces  of  racial,  or  class,  or  military  minorities,  will  be  a 
help  to  human  progress. 


244 


CHAPTER  XI 
SCIENCE 

IN  the  preceding  chapters  I  have  discussed  particular 
forms  of  thought,  and  particular  social  and  political 
expedients,  with  a  constant  fear  that  they  will  prove 
to  be  inadequate,  even  when  taken  all  together,  to  pre- 
serve us  against  worse  disasters  than  those  from  which 
we  are  now  suffering.  In  the  next  two  chapters  I  shall 
discuss  two  conceptions  of  the  universe — two  "world- 
outlooks,"  if  one  may  so  translate  the  German  word 
Weltanschauungen,  on  behalf  of  both  of  which  it  is 
claimed  that  they  can  so  penetrate  and  illuminate  our 
particular  forms  of  thought  and  action  as  to  make  a  good 
life  possible  for  all  mankind.  The  first  of  these  "world- 
outlooks"  is  Science,  the  general  conception  of  cause  and 
effect  which  underlies  "scientific  method"  in  thought,  but 
which  has  never  been  embodied  in  a  formal  creed  or  an 
organized  institution.  The  second  is  the  tradition  em- 
bodied in  the  organization  of  the  Church. 

The  idea  of.  Science  is,  as  Mr.  William  Archer  has  said, 
the  Apollo  of  the  modern  world,  "Destroyer  and  Healer 
in  one"  (Daily  News,  October  7,  1918).  Since  the  first 
conscious  use  of  scientific  method  the  world-outlook  of 

245 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

science  has  given  mankind  a  constantly  growing  sense  of 
power  in  dealing  with  their  environment.  It  is  because  we 
assume  that  the  same  effects  always  follow  the  same 
causes  in  our  environment,  that  we  have  learnt  to  make 
world-war,  and  may  some  day  learn  to  make  world-peace. 
The  conception  of  an  immutable  relation  of  cause  and 
effect  has  inevitably  extended  from  our  idea  of  our  en- 
vironment to  our  idea  of  ourselves  and  our  conduct,  and 
our  growing  knowledge  of  human  psychology  offers  us  in 
this  region  also  a  new  sense  of  power.  But  it  is  a  serious 
misfortune  for  mankind  that  the  idea  of  causation  in  con- 
duct leads  straight  to  the  old  dilemma  of  necessity  and 
free  will.  When  a  man  thinks  of  the  whole  universe  as  a 
finite  interrelated  unity  he  willingly  submits  to  the  con- 
ception of  universal  necessity;  but  when  he  thinks  of  his 
own  behavior,  or  that  of  his  neighbors,  as  facts  separable 
from  the  rest  of  the  universe,  he  often  finds  himself  pos- 
sessed with  a  passionate  conviction  that  the  human  will 
is  somehow  "free";  that  the  issues  of  his  own  struggles 
against  temptation  or  his  own  choice  of  means  and  ends 
are  not  predetermined;  and  that  his  neighbors,  when  they 
do  things  for  which  he  blames  or  praises  them,  could  have 
acted  differently.  The  argument  that  his  own  volition, 
and  his  own  sense  of  freedom  in  exercising  it,  are  as  im- 
mutably the  results  of  antecedent  causes  as  anything  else 
in  the  universe  seems  to  him  in  such  a  mood  to  be  a  mere 
verbal  trap. 

When  I  ask  myself  what  is  the  truth  behind  these  two 
opposite  convictions,  I  find  myself  guessing  that  to  an 
intellect  higher  than  or  different  from  our  own  it  may  be 
evident  that  everything  that  happens  is  both  free  and 
caused.  Somewhere  in  Mars,  or  on  the  other  side  of  the 

246 


SCIENCE 

Milky  Way,  or  in  the  universe  of  Einstein,  there  may  be 
a  being  who  would  find  it  hard  to  realize  our  difficulty  in 
seeing  that  force  and  life,  the  flow  of  a  river  between  its 
banks,  and  the  dart  of  a  fish  upstream,  are  manifestations 
of  the  same  thing;  and  that,  if  one  must  use  human  words, 
it  is  nearer  the  truth  to  say  that  everything  is  alive  than 
that  everything  is  dead.  But  just  as  the  rhinoceros,  by 
the  structure  of  its  spinal  column  is  prevented  from  see- 
ing, and  therefore  from  imagining  its  own  tail,1  so  man, 
owing  either  to  his  ignorance  or  to  some  fact  in  his  cere- 
bral, or  cellular,  or  atomic  structure,  is  prevented  from 
seeing  more  than  one  side  at  a  time  of  the  problem  of  free 
will  and  causation.  Yet,  if  the  rhinoceros  ever  evolved 
something  like  human  intelligence  while  retaining  the  gen- 
eral outline  of  its  present  anatomy,  one  can  imagine  that  a 
future  rhinoceros  might  ultimately,  by  observation  of  his 
neighbors'  tails  and  introspection  as  to  the  kinetic  sensa- 
tions accompanying  the  stimulation  of  his  own  tail- 
muscles,  come  to  believe  if  not  to  realize  that  he  himself 
had  a  tail.  And  mankind  in  like  manner  may  ultimately 
form  a  conception  of  human  motive  which  will  enable  us 
to  believe  if  not  to  realize  that  freedom  and  causation  are 
two  sides  of  one  shield.  Perhaps  we  may  get  help  in  this 
respect  from  the  spread  into  common  thought  of  new  con- 
ceptions of  infinity.  The  conception  of  determinism  is 
closely  related  to  the  idea  of  the  universe  as  finite;  but 
we  can  all  try  now  to  conceive  not  only  of  space  as  infi- 

1  See  Prof.  F.  Wood  Jones's  admirable  Arboreal  Man  (1916),  p.  167. 
"A  tapir  .  .  .  can  see  but  little  of  its  body,  and  can  examine  with  its 
tactile  nose  only  a  very  limited  portion  of  it.  ...  An  arboreal  animal 
gains  a  precise  knowledge  of  its  own  body;  it  can  realize  its  form,  and  it 
has,  to  a  certain  extent,  a  working  idea  of  the  alterations  in  its  form 
which  are  the  outcomes  of  the  movements  of  its  several  parts." 

247 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

nite,  but  also  of  the  atoms,  whose  finite  number  and  indi- 
visible simplicity  used  to  fix  a  narrow  limit  to  the  com- 
plexity of  the  universe,  as  being,  perhaps,  each  of  them, 
an  infinitely  complex  individual.2 

In  early  human  thought,  the  problem  of  free  will  and 
determinism  tended  to  take  religious  forms.  In  the  Greek 
tragedies  the  will  of  man,  though  conscious  of  itself,  is  as 
helpless  against  fate  as  a  withered  leaf  against  the  wind. 
From  Augustine  till  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, men  discussed  free  will  as  a  problem  in  the  interpre- 
tation of  the  Christian  dogma  of  the  omniscience  of  God; 
since  God  is  omniscient,  he  must  know  all  that  we  shall 
do,  as  well  as  all  that  we  have  done  or  are  doing.  It  was, 
however,  so  difficult  to  harmonize  predestinarianism  with 
the  Christian  ethical  conceptions  of  sin  and  holiness,  that 
no  one  could  prophesy  how  any  rigorously  logical  predes- 
tinarian  thinker  would  in  fact  behave.  He  might  be- 
come a  persecutor  like  Calvin,  or  a  lunatic  like  Cowper. 

In  1667  Milton,  in  his  Paradise  Lost,  told  how  the 
fallen  angels 

reasoned  high,  of  ... 

Fixed  fate,  free  will,  foreknowledge  absolute, 
And  found  no  end,  in  wandering  mazes  lost. 

But  in  1651  Hobbes  had  published  his  Leviathan,  and  the 
Royal  Society  was  founded  in  1660.  Since  the  middle  of 
the  seventeenth  century,  the  application  of  determinism 
to  human  conduct  has  mainly  used  arguments  drawn,  not 
from  divine  foreknowledge,  but  from  the  observed  uni- 
formities of  physics  or  astronomy.  In  his  De  Homine 

2  I  owe  this  suggestion  of  the  possible  effect  of  the  idea  of  the  infi- 
nite complexity  and  individuality  of  the  atom  upon  the  psychological 
reaction  of  the  idea  of  determinism  to  Mr.  James  Harvey  Robinson. 

248 


SCIENCE 

(1658)  Hobbes  writes  that  "everyone  is  compelled  to  seek 
what  for  him  is  good  and  avoid  what  for  him  is  bad  .  .  . 
by  a  necessity  not  less  than  that  which  compels  the  stone 
to  fall  downward."3  Already  in  Hobbes  one  can  trace 
that  which  was  to  prove  the  main  practical  danger  of  de- 
terminist  sociology.  There  are  certain  simple  facts  in  hu- 
man behavior  which  it  is  much  easier  to  compare  to  the 
behavior  of  a  falling  stone  than  other  and  more  complex 
facts.  These  primitive  instinctive  processes  seem  to  us  to 
be  much  more  inevitable  in  their  action  than  the  proc- 
esses which  involve  doubt  and  choice.  When  Horace 
says,  "Expel  nature  with  a  pitchfork,  and  she  will  always 
return,"  it  is  hard  for  us  not  to  feel  that  the  instincts 
which  he  calls  nature  are  more  predetermined  than  the 
conscious  decision  which  he  calls  the  pitchfork.  Hobbes' 
own  list  of  effective  political  motives  contained  little  but 
fear  in  the  governed  and  the  desire  of  power  in  the 
governor.  Every  other  motive  seemed  to  him  to  be  unsci- 
entific, and  therefore,  by  the  subconscious  process  of  psy- 
chological logic,  either  non-existent  or  existing  illegiti- 
mately. Helvetius  in  1758  uses  a  conception  of  human 
motive  even  simpler  than  that  of  Hobbes;  "If  the  physical 
universe,"  he  says,  "is  subject  to  the  laws  of  motion,  the 
moral  universe  is  not  less  subject  to  the  laws  of  interest,"4 
and  by  "interest"  he  means  nothing  more  than  the  desire 
for  pleasure  and  the  avoidance  of  pain.  Bentham  took  his 
philosophy  of  motive  in  the  main  from  Helvetius,5  and 

3  De  Homine,  quoted  by  Halevy,  La  Formation  du  Radicalisme  Philo- 
sophique,  Vol.  I,  p.  277. 

4  Helvetius,  De  I'Esprit,  Discours  II,  Chap.  II. 

5  "What   Bacon   was   to  the   physical   world    Helvetius  was   to   the 
moral"  (Bentham  in  the  fragment  quoted  by  Halevy,  La  Formation  du 
Radkalisme  Philosophique,  Vol.  I,  p.  290). 

249 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

Bentham's  political  ideas,  as  distinguished  from  his  legal 
ideas,  reached  the  British  public  mainly  through  James 
Mill.  James  Mill  in  the  Essay  on  Government  (1829) 
which  was  widely  accepted  as  "the  gospel  of  scientific 
radicalism,"  wrote  that  "the  positions  we  have  already 
established  with  regard  to  human  nature,  and  which  we 
assume  as  foundations  are  these:  That  the  actions  of  men 
are  governed  by  their  desires.  That  their  desires  are  di- 
rected to  pleasure  and  the  relief  of  pain  as  ends  and  to 
wealth  and  power  as  the  principal  means,  That  to  the 
desire  of  those  means  there  is  no  limit"  (p.  7). 

Every  student  of  the  history  of  economic  thought  is 
familiar  with  the  effect  during  the  first  half  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  of  this  tendency  on  the  "classical"  Eng- 
lish economists;  and  on  those  whom  their  ideas  reached 
at  first  or  second  hand.  Ricardo,  writing  in  1817  on  the 
effects  of  non-deterrent  Poor  Laws,  said:  "The  principle 
of  gravitation  is  not  more  certain  than  the  tendency  of 
such  laws  to  change  wealth  and  power  into  misery  and 
weakness";6  and,  in  spite  of  occasional  attempts  to  pro- 
tect himself  from  oversimplification  in  his  reasoning, 
Ricardo  ordinarily  assumes  that  men  will  be  inevitably 
guided  by  simple  economic  motives.  McCulloch  defi- 
nitely denied  the  usefulness  of  any  other  motive.  "It  is," 
he  wrote  in  the  last  paragraph  of  his  Principles  of  Political 
Economy  (1825),  "by  the  spontaneous  and  unconstrained 
but  well  protected  efforts  of  individuals  to  improve  their 
condition,  and  to  rise  in  the  world,  and  by  these  efforts 
only,  that  nations  become  rich  and  powerful."7  And  hav- 

6  Principles  of  Political  Economy  (1817),  p.  114. 

7  It  is  noteworthy  that  in  the  fourth  edition  (1849)  the  words  "and 
by  these  efforts  only"  are  omitted. 

250 


SCIENCE 

ing  denied  their  usefulness,  he  proceeded  to  ignore  in  his 
economic  analysis  their  existence. 

But  the  statesmen  and  employers  who  looked  to  the 
economists  for  guidance  had  not  only  to  think,  but  also 
to  take  practical  decisions  by  which  the  lives  of  men  and 
women  and  children  were  affected.  While  so  doing  they 
discovered  in  themselves  comparatively  complex  and 
variable  motives,  such  as  love  or  pity,  which  were  much 
less  easily  assumed  to  be  analogous  to  physical  laws  like 
gravitation  than  were  the  simple  and  apparently  uniform 
attractive  and  repulsive  "economic"  forces  of  pleasure 
and  pain.  What  was  the  relation  of  these  more  complex 
motives  to  the  "laws  of  political  economy"?  The  states- 
man or  manufacturer  was  apt  to  act  on  the  half-conscious 
assumption  that  economic  "laws"  were  rules  of  conduct 
which  the  economists  commanded  (with  all  the  authority 
of  "Science"  behind  them)  mankind  to  obey;  but  which 
any  man  was  free  at  his  own  risk  to  disobey.  A  hard- 
hearted manufacturer,  therefore,  deliberately  attempted 
to  inhibit  his  own  feelings  of  pity,  and  justified  himself 
for  brutal  exploitation  of  women  and  children  by  saying 
that  he  was  "obeying  the  laws  of  political  economy"; 
while  a  kind-hearted  statesman  pleaded  for  a  policy  of 
mercy  with  the  feeling  that  he  was  a  rebel  against  law. 
When  in  1834  Lord  Althorp  asked  the  House  of  Com- 
mons to  maintain  the  Poor  Law  with  modifications, 
instead  of  abolishing  it  as  some  of  the  more  logical  econ- 
omists desired,  he  said,  "He  was  of  opinion  that  a  well- 
regulated  system  of  Poor  Laws  would  be  of  great  benefit 
to  the  country.  He  was  aware  that  he  was  now  express- 
ing an  opinion  contrary  to  the  more  strict  principles  of 
political  economy.  Indeed  those  principles  went  further, 

251 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

for  they  even  prohibited  the  exercise  of  private  charity. 
.  .  .  But  as  long  as  we  were  accessible  not  only  to  the 
feelings  of  religion  but  to  the  dictates  of  humanity,  we 
must  be  convinced  that  the  support  of  those  who  were 
really  helpless  and  really  unable  to  provide  for  them- 
selves, was  not  only  justified  but  a  sacred  duty  imposed 
on  those  who  had  the  ability  to  assist  the  distressed" 
(April  17,  1834).  Sir  James  Mackintosh  in  1832,  during 
the  debate  on  the  first  effective  Factory  Act,  said  that  he 
"was  anxious  to  avow  himself  a  political  economist,  but 
at  the  same  time  ...  he  would  not  allow  even  the  prin- 
ciples of  political  economy  to  be  accessory  to  the  inflic- 
tion of  torture"  (February  i,  1832).  To  men  and  women 
like  Archbishop  Whately,  or  Harriet  Martineau,  or  even 
Ricardo,  this  simplification  of  human  motive  had  the 
further  half-conscious  attraction  that  it  created  a  world 
which  was,  like  the  cricket  news  or  chess  column  in  the 
newspaper,  far  easier  to  think  about  than  the  world  of 
concrete  happenings  to  concrete  and  complex  human  be- 
ings. 

From  the  publication  of  Ricardo 's  Principles  in  1817, 
until  the  revolutionary  year  1848,  most  people  thought 
of  the  conception  of  scientific  determinism,  and  the  simpli- 
fication of  human  motive  which  was  associated  with  it,  as 
supporting  the  position  of  the  propertied  classes  in 
Europe.  But  already  in  1813  Robert  Owen's  New  View 
of  Society  had  shown  that  the  conception  could  be  used 
to  support  a  scheme  of  revolutionary  philanthropy,  and 
from  1820  to  1830  Hodgskin  and  the  other  English  pre- 
cursors of  Marx  turned  Ricardo 's  economic  analysis  from 
a  middle-class  argument  for  capitalism  into  a  working- 
class  argument  for  revolution.  Marx  himself  and  Lassalle 

252 


SCIENCE 

based  the  "scientific  socialism"  which  became  the  "gos- 
pel of  the  working  classes"  on  the  same  simplified  deter- 
minism. A  Marxist  believer  in  the  materialist  explana- 
tion of  history  could  henceforward  agree  with  the  disciples 
of  the  "classical"  economists  in  reducing  all  motive  to  the 
simple  desire  for  pecuniary  gain.  When  certain  German 
socialist  deputies  visited  Brussels  in  September,  1914,  to 
remonstrate  with  the  Belgian  socialists  for  resisting  the 
German  invasion,  Dr.  Koster,  editor  of  the  Socialist 
Hamburger  Echo  is  said  to  have  argued,  "You  ought  to 
have  let  us  pass;  you  would  have  been  handsomely  com- 
pensated by  our  government."  The  Belgians  asked 
whether  no  weight  should  be  given  to  national  honor,  in- 
ternational treaties,  and  the  rights  of  free  peoples.  "Na- 
tional honor,"  Dr.  Koster  is  said  to  have  replied,  "that 
is  mere  middle-class  idealism  with  which  socialists  have 
nothing  to  do.  ...  Does  not  historical  materialism  teach 
us  that  the  development  of  the  proletariat  is  intimately 
bound  up  with  the  economic  prosperity  of  the  nation?" 
A  Belgian  said  that  the  only  thing  they  seemed  to  possess 
in  common  was  a  stomach;  but  that  on  the  Belgian  side 
there  was  a  heart  as  well.8 

Darwin's  demonstration  that  human  instincts  could  be 
brought  within  the  conception  of  biological  evolution  in- 
creased, both  in  Germany  and  elsewhere,  this  tendency 
to  simplify  human  motive.  The  word  Realpolitiker,  for 
instance,  means  a  man  who  believes  that  the  political  rela- 
tion between  human  beings  should  be  conceived  of  sci- 
entifically in  the  simple  terms  of  "the  struggle  for  life"; 
that  any  motives  which  do  not  lead  up  to  that  struggle 

8W.  S.  Sanders,  Pan-German  Socialism,  pp.  22-23.  I  have  heard  M. 
Vandervelde  give  a  similar  account  of  this  interview. 

253 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

are  unscientific  and  illegitimate;  and  that  therefore  it  is 
his  duty,  if  he  feels  love  or  pity  for  his  neighbors,  or  a 
desire  to  take  their  good  into  his  consideration,  to  ignore 
or,  if  necessary,  to  inhibit  that  feeling  and  desire.9  Berg- 
son  originally  offered  his  elan  vital  as  a  means  of  avoid- 
ing the  dilemma  of  determinism,  by  conceiving  of  uncal- 
culated  human  impulse  as  outside  that  sphere  of  causation 
in  which  rational  logic  must  work.  But  the  syndi- 
calists in  France  before  the  war,  and  the  Bolsheviks  in 
Russia  during  and  after  the  war,  associated  Bergsonism 
with  Marx's  "materialist  explanation  of  history,"  and 
treated  it  as  one  more  reason  why  they  should  ignore  in 
their  own  conduct  any  but  the  simplest  motives.  Mr. 
Julius  West,  for  instance,  who  spoke  Russian,  and  had 
often  talked  with  the  chiefs  of  the  Petrograd  Soviet,  wrote 
(May  5,  1918)  in  the  New  Statesman  about  the  current 
use  of  the  Russian  word  stikhiyny  which  means,  he  says, 
"elemental,"  perhaps  "intuitive."  "One  finds  Bolshevik 
leaders  justifying  most  of  the  things  for  which  they  are 
responsible  by  the  statement  that  they  result  from  ele- 
mental forces.  Revolution  .  .  .  is  a  matter  of  these 
forces  rather  than  of  deliberate  organization."10  And 

9  General  Lord  Rawlinson,  who  has  since  been  made  Commander-in- 
Chief  in  India,  is  reported  (Daily  News,  May  5,  1920)  to  have  said,  "I 
am  much  afraid  that  war  is  a  law  of  nature.    From  the  very  microbes  in 
your  blood  to  the  great  contests  between  nations  the  whole  thing  is  a 
struggle  for  existence." 

10  In  a  wireless  statement  (published  in  the  Daily  News,  September 
16,  1920)  Lenin  says  "Executions  seem  to  have  aroused  Dittmann's  in- 
dignation, but  in  such  circumstances  as  indicated  it  is  natural  that  revo- 
lutionary workers  execute  Mensheviks,  a  fact  which,  of  course,  cannot 
very  well  appeal  to  him."     I  do  not  know  what  Russian  word  is  here 
translated  "natural."     The  final  phrase  may  indicate  a  vague  feeling  in 

254 


SCIENCE 

anyone  who  has  had  much  intercourse  with  those  British 
or  American  artisans  who  have  formed  their  habits  of 
thought  on  popular  expositions  of  Marxianism,  must  have 
met  men  and  women,  who  if  they  were  in  power  would  feel 
themselves  bound  to  show  the  same  kind  of  scientifically 
conscientious  ruthlessness  as  Lenin  or  Trotsky. 

In  the  United  States  the  number  of  serious  students  of 
sociology  and  politics  is  very  much  larger  than  in  Eng- 
land; and  a  general  acquaintance  with  the  technical  terms 
of  those  sciences  is  much  more  widely  spread.  In  the 
universities,  in  the  newspapers,  and  in  ordinary  conversa- 
tion, psychological  terms  are  used  where  an  Englishman 
would  not  expect  them.  This  fact  appears  sometimes  to 
produce  the  incidental,  and,  as  it  seems  to  me,  undesirable 
effect  of  increasing  the  feeling  of  helplessness  in  the  indi- 
vidual citizen  when  faced  by  great  movements  of  opinion 
among  tens  of  millions  of  his  fellow-citizens.  That  feeling 
often  seems  to  paralyze  the  personal  initiative  without 
which  democracy  is  the  worst  possible  form  of  govern- 
ment, and  to  be  heightened  by  forms  of  thought  which 
treat  the  impulses  of  the  majority  as  more  capable  of  sci- 
entific treatment  than  the  impulses  of  the  individual.  I 
have  been  shown  by  an  able  academic  thinker  a  plotted 
curve  illustrating  a  certain  tendency,  and  on  saying  that 
such  a  curve  should  be  a  stimulus  to  individual  action  in 
opposition  to  the  tendency,  have  been  told  that  I  am  ap- 
parently a  believer  in  the  obsolete  "great  man  theory," 
and  "preaching  theory";  and  I  have  known  American 
progressives  who  received  an  appeal  for  a  protest  against 
what  they  themselves  believed  to  be  gross  oppression  to 

Lenin's  mind  that  it  is  difficult  to  draw  from  his  own  philosophy  a  gen- 
erally applicable  rule  of  human  conduct. 

255 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

be  satisfied  to  answer  that  it  was  "a  case  of  mass- 
psychology."  The  British  Labor  Party  in  its  eloquent 
manifesto  Labor  and  the  New  Social  Order  pleads  for  the 
application  of  "scientific  method"  to  politics;  "In  the 
still  undeveloped  Science  of  Society,  the  Labor  Party 
stands  for  increased  study,  for  the  scientific  investigation 
of  each  succeeding  problem,  for  the  deliberate  organiza- 
tion of  research,  and  for  a  much  more  rapid  dissemination 
among  the  whole  people  of  all  the  science  that  exists."11 
Admirable  as  that  plea  is,  it  will  not  have  its  full  effect 
unless  the  members  of  the  Labor  Party  learn  to  avoid  the 
habit  of  separating  the  facts  of  human  motive  into  those 
which  are  "scientific"  and  those  which  are  not;  and  they 
are  not  likely  to  do  so  unless  they  receive  more  help  than 
they  do  at  present  from  professed  students.  The  students 
of  the  physical  sciences  often  seem,  indeed,  to  deny  that 
the  moral  sciences  have  any  right  to  the  common  name.12 

11  Labor  and  the  New  Social  Order  (1918).    Mr.  Sidney  Webb  in  a 
letter  (as  Labor  candidate)  to  the  electors  of  London  University,  said 
that  the  policy  of  his  party  "calls  for  knowledge  and  the  scientific  method 
and  sustained  and  disinterested  thought." 

12  In  1916  a  number  of  the  most  distinguished  British  scientists  pub- 
lished a  manifesto  on  the  neglect  of  "what  is  called  science"  or  "physical 
science,"  and  explained  that  "By  these  terms  we  mean  the  ascertained 
facts  and  principles  of  mechanics,  chemistry,  physics,  biology,  geography 
and  geology."    The  manifesto  urged  that  these  subjects  should  be  given 
"a  preponderating  or  at  least  an  equal  share  of  marks"  in  the  examina- 
tion for  the  Civil  Service.     No  reference  was  made  to  the  sciences  of 
economics,  psychology,  history,  and  jurisprudence,  which  are  directly  re- 
lated to  the  art  of  administration.    At  the  conference  held  to  advocate 
the  manifesto,  all  the  speakers  confined  themselves  to  a  comparison  be- 
tween the  educational  value  of  the  laboratory  sciences  and  of  Greek  and 
Latin  literature  (The  Neglect  of  Science,  Harrison  and  Son,  1916).    Sir 
William  Ramsay  in  his  evidence  before  the  Royal  Commission  on  the 
Civil  Service  (January  10,  1913),  said  that  the  Civil  Service  as  a  whole 

256 


SCIENCE 

A  physiological  psychologist  so  able  as  Professor  J.  B. 
Watson,  rejoices  in  the  fact  that  "It  is  possible  to  write 
a  psychology  .  .  .  and  .  .  .  never  to  use  the  terms  con- 
sciousness, mental  states,  mind,  content,  will,  imagery, 
and  the  like";13  as  if  things  that  one  does  not  mention  will 
cease  to  exist.  On  the  other  hand,  the  metaphysical 
philosophers  who  associate  human  will  with  divine  pur- 
pose sometimes,  while  insisting  that  the  human  will  exists, 
deny  to  the  psychologists  the  right  to  think  about  it.  Mr. 
Ernest  Barker,  for  instance,  argues  against  "those  Eng- 
lish sociologists  like  McDougall  and  Graham  Wallas  who 
seek  to  find  in  psychology  the  key  to  social  phenomena. 
...  To  analyze  the  processes  of  social  instinct  that  lie 
in  the  dim  background  of  a  society  now  united  in  the  pur- 
suit of  a  common  moral  object  is  not  to  explain  the  real 
nature  or  the  real  cause  of  such  a  society."  The  "pursuit 
of  a  common  moral  object"  is  not,  apparently,  part  of  the 
legitimate  subject-matter  of  psychological  science. 

"can  be  divided  into  two  classes — the  scientific  and  technically  trained 
persons  and  the  administrators  .  .  .  administrators  might  be  very  largely 
dispensed  with  because  the  scientific  persons  are  capable  of  the  amount 
of  administration  necessary  to  administer  their  departments"  (question 
22,578). 

13  Behaviour  (1914),  p.  9. 


257 


CHAPTER  XII 
THE  CHURCH 


IN  August,  1920,  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury 
issued,  on  behalf  of  the  Lambeth  Conference  of  two 
hundred  and  fifty-two  British  and  American  bishops 
of  the  Anglican  Communion,  a  letter  "to  all  men  and 
women  of  good  will,"  and  especially  to  those  "beyond  the 
frontiers  of  the  Christian  Society  .  .  .  who  have  been 
watching,  in  deep  concern,  the  wasting  of  the  moral  re- 
sources of  the  world  during  these  recent  years.  .  .  .  We 
bespeak  their  considerate  attention.  To  them  the  future 
of  the  Christian  Church  can  never  be  unimportant  .  .  . 
the  strengthening  of  the  individual  and  the  cementing  of 
society  are  the  very  things  which  the  world,  on  the  mor- 
row of  the  supreme  catastrophe  of  the  war,  clearly  needs 
for  the  re-ordering  of  its  life."1  In  the  Encyclical  Letter 
issued  from  the  Conference,  the  Archbishop  says  that  "the 
sense  of  nationality  seems  to  be  a  natural  instinct,"  but 
that  "the  love  which  Christ  pours  into  the  hearts  that  are 
His,  makes  men  cease  to  hate  each  other  because  they 
belong  to  different  nations."2 

1  The  Church  Times  (August  13,  1920). 

2  Ibid. 


THE  CHURCH 

Dr.  Gore  (then  Bishop  of  Oxford)  made  in  1915  a  simi- 
lar appeal  on  behalf  of  that  sacramental  conception  of 
Christianity  which  is  now  the  most  powerful  force  in  the 
Anglican,  as  it  has  always  been  the  dominant  force  in  the 
Roman,  Communion.  "The  central  idea  of  the  Bible  is 
that  the  knowledge  and  worship  of  God  is  to  express  itself 
in  a  visible  and  tangible  human  fellowship,  and  in  the 
New  Testament  it  is  apparent  that  this  fellowship  must  be 
Catholic,  that  is,  must  be  supernational.  The  very  idea 
of  the  Sacraments,  which  are  social  ceremonies  of  incor- 
poration and  sharing  together,  is  to  identify  the  idea  of 
personal  union  with  God  with  the  idea  of  fellowship  in 
the  community.  .  .  .  The  religious  idea  of  the  Catholic 
Church  (which  if  it  is  to  be  truly  Christian  must  be  funda- 
mentally independent  of  national  organization)  is  to  be 
the  handmaid  of  such  an  organization  of  nations  as  shall 
subordinate  the  nation  to  humanity.  ...  A  nation  can 
reconstruct  itself,  if  it  will,  with  a  conscious  corporate 
aim  and  effect,  .  .  .  but  its  efforts  and  its  aspirations 
must  be  such  as  culminate  in  the  worship  not  of  a  national 
God  .  .  .  but  of  the  only  true  God,  who  has  no  prefer- 
ences for  nation  over  nation,  but  wills  that  all  should 
realize  themselves  in  mutual  service,  and  has  founded  a 
Catholic  Church  to  show  to  men  of  good  will  the  true 
path  of  human  progress."3 

No  "man  of  good  will"  can  read  these  eloquent  words 
without  sympathy  with  the  hope  that  a  religion  which 
emphasizes  the  reality  of  human  volition  and  sees  that 
volition  in  relation  to  the  good  which  is  in  the  whole  uni- 
verse may  strengthen  the  weak  forces  which  make  for 

3  Sermon  in  Birmingham,  Church  Times  (October  8,  1915). 

259 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

world-peace  and  a  conscious  world-purpose.  But  the 
"considerate  attention"  for  which  the  Archbishop  pleads 
requires  that  we  should  ask  what  influence  organized 
Christianity,  and  especially  Catholic  and  Anglican  Chris- 
tianity, did  in  fact  exercise  throughout  "the  supreme 
catastrophe  of  the  war."  The  war  is  still  so  recent,  and 
the  disruptive  forces  which  it  loosed  are  still  so  active, 
that  it  is  difficult  to  find  any  incident  in  the  war  on  which 
the  moral  judgment  of  mankind  is  now  agreed.  Perhaps 
the  German  invasion  of  Belgium  in  1914  conies  nearest 
to  such  an  incident;  or  the  initiation  of  unlimited  sub- 
marine warfare  in  1917.  On  the  treatment  of  Serbia  by 
Austria  in  1914  there  is  not  so  complete  an  agreement; 
but  here,  too,  the  judgment  of  mankind  may  be  said  to 
have  fairly  declared  itself.  What  influence  on  those 
events  was  exercised  by  the  Catholic  and  Lutheran 
Churches  in  Germany,  and  the  Catholic  Church  in  Aus- 
tria? During  the  war  I  read  the  little  evidence  on  this 
point  which  was  available,  and  since  the  war  I  have  asked 
every  German  or  other  observer  whom  I  have  met  and 
who  could  give  me  first-hand  information.  The  evidence 
seems  to  point  unmistakably  to  an  inverse  statistical  cor- 
relation between  membership  of  those  churches,  and  an 
attitude  of  protest  against  the  national  wrongdoing. 
Thousands  of  men  and  women  were  imprisoned  in  Ger- 
many and  Austria  for  protesting,  but  I  have  not  heard 
that  any  of  them  (except  where,  as  with  the  Poles  in 
Posen,  and  the  Czechs  in  Bohemia,  membership  of  a  rival 
nationality  was  in  question)  were  members  of  any  recog- 
nized Christian  body.  And  those  political  parties  which 
were  most  closely  identified  with  the  Churches  were  most 

260 


THE  CHURCH 

eager  in  supporting  the  actions  now  condemned.4  Many 
observers  since  the  war  have  regretted  the  French  "Car- 
thaginian" policy  with  regard  to  Germany  and  the  ruthless 
nationalist  ambitions  of  Poland;  but  such  evidence  as  I 
have  seen  seems  to  indicate  that  in  each  case  the  antihu- 
manitarian  policy  was  supported  by  the  Catholic  Church, 
and  only  opposed  by  persons  who  were  not  members  of 
that  Church. 

No  one  can,  I  think,  accuse  the  Church  of  England  of 
going,  as  the  Lutheran  and  Catholic  Churches  in  Ger- 
many and  Austria  and  Poland  and  France  seem  to  have 
gone,  beyond  the  average  of  public  opinion  in  advocating 
those  incidents  of  the  war  and  peace  which  have  most 
deeply  injured  good-will  among  mankind.  In  the  ad- 
vocacy of  a  League  of  Nations  the  Anglican  Church  in 
England  and  America  has  an  honorable  record.  The  Arch- 

4  Innumerable  cases  of  this  were  published  during  the  war.  I  may 
quote  as  an  instance  a  resolution  of  the  clericalist  Centre  Party  in  the 
Bavarian  Diet,  welcoming  the  appointment  of  Hindenburg  as  Chief  of 
the  General  Staff  as  a  proof  that  "all  the  weapons  of  Germany  will  be 
employed  without  reserve,  and  against  all  our  enemies  with  equal  re- 
lentlessness"  (Westminster  Gazette,  September  29,  1916).  Bethmann- 
Hollweg  told  the  Reichstag  committee  in  1919  that  at  the  confidential 
conference  of  January  30,  1917  (to  consider  President  Wilson's  suggestions 
of  peace) ,  "All  the  Conservatives  were  for  the  submarine  war,  and  against 
the  very  moderate  peace  terms  we  offered.  The  Centralists  joined  the 
Conservative  ranks,  and  begged  us  not  to  stick  to  those  terms  if  it  really 
came  to  peace  negotiations"  (New  York  Sun,  November  18,  1919)-  Ed- 
ward Bernstein  said  (New  Statesman,  March  20,  1920),  "The  war  was,  in 
a  degree,  the  work  of  the  Austrian  Catholic  clergy,  whose  organ,  the 
Vienna  Reichspost,  did  very  much  to  create  the  atmosphere  which  bred 
it  in  the  Hapsburg  Empire."  On  the  other  hand,  the  majority-socialist 
and  the  anti-clerical  Vorwartz  had  the  courage  in  1917  to  say,  "there  is 
such  a  thing  as  right,  and  Belgium  has  a  right  to  her  independent  life" 
(Daily  Telegraph,  September  20,  1917)- 

261 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

bishop  of  Canterbury  spoke  at  the  important  meeting  of 
the  League  of  Nations  Society  on  May  14,  1917,  and  on 
December  5,  1918,  was  one  of  the  signatories  to  an  "ap- 
peal to  Christians"  on  behalf  of  the  League,  issued  by  the 
official  heads  of  all  British  Churches  except  the  Roman 
Catholic,  in  which  it  is  stated  that  the  League  is  "now 
accepted  by  the  consent  both  of  leaders  and  of  public 
opinion."5  But  future  historians  will,  I  think,  say  that 
the  official  pronouncements  of  the  Anglican  Church  did 
not  go  beyond  public  opinion  at  those  moments  of  the  war 
and  peace  when  a  courageous  humanitarianism  would 
have  had  most  effect.  The  policy  of  the  British  govern- 
ment during  the  election  of  December,  1918,  and,  in  con- 
sequence, during  the  peace-negotiations  of  the  following 
months,  will  some  day  be  generally  thought  of  as  a  disas- 
ter to  mankind.  After  the  signature  of  the  armistice,  and 
before  that  policy  had  been  declared,  Professor  Deiss- 
mann  of  Berlin  forwarded,  through  the  Archbishop  of 
Upsala,  an  appeal  "to  the  Christian  leaders  whom  I  know 
in  the  belligerent  countries,  to  use  all  their  influence  so 
that  the  approaching  peace  may  not  contain  the  seed  of 
new  universal  catastrophes";  and  the  Archbishop  of  Can- 
terbury sent  his  reply  to  the  English  newspapers.  It  was 
a  moment  when  a  single  word  of  kindness  or  even  pity 
might  have  done  incalculable  good.  But  Lord  North- 
cliffe's  Evening  News,  which  published  the  Archbishop's 
reply  in  full,  rightly  headed  it  as  "a  stern  rebuke";  it 
sets  out  "the  savagery  which  the  German  high  command 
has  displayed  in  carrying  on  the  war,"  states  that  "the 
position  would  have  been  different  had  there  been  on  the 
part  of  Christian  circles  in  Germany  any  public  protest 

5  Daily  News  (December  5,  1918). 

262 


THE  CHURCH 

against  the  gross  wrongs,  or  any  repudiation  of  their  per- 
petrators," and,  in  a  passage  which  the  Evening  News 
quotes  as  "the  note  which  marks  the  reply,"  says,  "right- 
eousness must  be  vindicated  even  though  the  vindication 
involves  sternness."6 

In  1918  the  Archbishop  of  York  visited  the  United 
States,  and  preached  at  the  Good  Friday  service  in  Trin- 
ity Church,  New  York,  on  the  "seven  words  from  the 
Cross."  On  May  n,  1918,  Lord  Northcliffe's  Daily  Mail, 
in  an  article  headed  "On  Loving  the  Hun,"  accused  the 
Archbishop  of  inviting  his  hearers  (while  preaching  from 
the  words  "Father  forgive  them")  "to  think  kindly,  not 
only  of  the  soldiers  and  peoples  of  Germany  and  Austria, 
but  also  of  their  rulers."  The  Archbishop  replied,  in  a 
letter  printed  in  the  Daily  Mail  May  27,  1918,  "I  did  not 
choose  the  subject.  Obviously  it  could  not  be  avoided"; 
and  explained  that  he  had  said  that  a  prayer  for  the  for- 
giveness of  our  enemies  "could  not  be  a  prayer  that  they 

*  Evening  News  (November  27,  1918).  One  has  to  be  cautious  in 
judging  a  church  or  party  by  its  newspapers.  But  those  who  know  the 
Church  of  England  will  agree  that  the  Church  Times  is  an  unusually 
representative,  as  well  as  unusually  able  organ  of  the  Anglo-Catholic,  and 
the  Guardian  of  the  moderate  High  Church,  parties.  On  October  17, 
1918,  the  editor  of  the  Guardian  wrote  that  "the  Church  must  preach 
and  the  Allied  Governments  must  practise  a  righteous  hardness  of 
hearts,"  and  as  late  as  May  29,  1919,  the  editor  of  the  Church  Times 
urged  that  the  Allies  "should  insist  on  the  strictest  compliance  with  the 
Peace  terms,  and  for  every  attempt  to  wriggle  out  of  their  obligations 
should  impose  still  severer  terms."  As  far  as  I  know,  no  protest  was  made 
from  the  side  of  the  Church  against  such  headings  as  "Fewer  little  Huns," 
given  by  the  editor  of  Lord  Northcliffe's  Evening  News  (March  3,  1919) 
to  a  paragraph  calling  attention  to  the  high  death-rate  and  low  birth- 
rate of  infants  in  Berlin,  or  against  the  head-line  in  Lord  Northcliffe's 
Daily  Mail  (November  16,  1918)  referring  to  Solfs  appeal  to  Wilson  for 
economic  aid  as  "Hun  Food  Snivel." 

263 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

should  be  let  off."  The  Mail  cabled  to  their  New  York 
correspondent,  and  appended  to  the  Archbishop's  letter 
the  correspondent's  reply — that  there  was  no  mistake 
about  the  words,  which  he  had  taken  down  in  longhand, 
but  that  "they  were  spoken  in  a  purely  religious  sense, 
and  that  there  was  nothing  pacifist  about  them."  "No 
practical  man,"  wrote  Canon  Temple  in  1915,  "dreams 
of  turning  to  the  Church  to  find  the  way  out  from  the 
intolerable  situation  into  which  the  nations  have  drifted."7 

Future  historians  may  also  say  that  a  great  opportu- 
nity was  lost  by  the  want  of  humanitarian  imagination 
and  sympathy  both  among  Irish  Catholics  and  among 
British  statesmen,  at  the  time  of  the  Irish  rising  in  1916. 
But  on  May  3,  1916,  after  the  rising,  the  Anglican  Arch- 
bishop of  Dublin  wrote  to  the  Times  mentioning  a  rumor, 
"that  the  officials  at  Dublin  Castle  are  anxious  to  dispense 
with  martial  law,"  and  urging  that  "this  is  not  the  time 
for  amnesties  and  pardons;  it  is  the  time  for  punishment 
swift  and  stern."8  Similarly,  during  the  discussion  of  the 
Dyer  incident  at  Amritsar  the  Archbishop  of  Simla  wrote 
to  the  Daily  Mail  that  "if  the  present  tendency  to  make  a 
scapegoat  of  the  white  soldier  amid  a  colored  race  suc- 
ceeds, the  military  authorities  in  the  future  may  hesitate 
to  act,  and  that  hesitation  will  have  consequences  which 
no  white  man  cares  to  contemplate."9 

There  are  many  causes  of  this  apparent  contradiction 
between  the  official  claims  and  the  actual  influence  of  the 
national  Churches.10  In  the  case  of  the  Church  of  Eng- 

7  Church  and  Nation  (1915),  pp.  25-26. 

8  Times  (May  5,  1916). 

9  Daily  Mail  (May  26,  1920). 

10  It  may,  of  course,  be  argued,  that  no  failure  of  Christianity  can  be 

264 


THE  CHURCH 

land,  one  cause  is,  I  think,  the  absence  of  a  consistent 
and  helpful  metaphysical  "world-outlook."  To  a  Chris- 
tian the  old  paralyzing  dilemma  of  will  and  fate  must  take 
a  theological  form;  and  the  official  leaders  of  the  Church 
of  England  do  not  seem  even  to  attempt  the  solution  of 
that  dilemma  with  sufficient  intellectual  seriousness.  The 
war  raised,  as  did  the  earthquake  of  Lisbon  in  1755,  the 
question  whether  God  is  omnipotent,  or  benevolent,  or 
both,  or  neither?  The  leaders  of  the  Church  of  England 
gave  us  many  answers.  The  Bishop  of  London  was 
frankly  Manichean,  "You  have  no  right  to  blame  God; 
it's  the  work  of  the  Devil.  God  is  hindered  at  every 
moment  by  the  Devil  and  all  his  works;  you  cannot  there- 
fore blame  our  great  and  glorious  God  for  the  defeat  of 
his  design."11  The  Bishop  of  Chichester  told  us,  not  that 
God's  design  has  been  defeated  by  the  Devil,  but  that  the 
apparent  failure  of  his  design  is  due  to  our  taking  too 
short  a  view  of  it.  "May  it  not  be  that  God  has  allowed 
this  war,  with  all  its  sorrow  and  suffering  and  misery  and 
cruelty,  in  order  that  we  may  hear  His  voice  to  which  we 
have  been  so  long  growing  more  and  more  deaf,  and  hear- 
ing we  may  live  a  life  worth  living?"12  The  Bishop  of 

proof  against  the  validity  of  its  message.  Dr.  Gore,  for  instance,  writes 
(in  No.  i  of  the  S.P.C.K.  War-time  tracts  for  the  Workers),  "Chris- 
tianity has  not  failed,  we  have  only  to  try  it."  But  what  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury  asks  for  in  his  message  to  "men  and  women  of 
good  will"  is  "considerate  attention"  to  "our  work."  If  a  religion  which 
has  existed  for  two  thousand  years  and  has  been  officially  held  by  most 
powerful  nations  in  the  world  for  fifteen  hundred  years,  has  not  been 
tried,  it  has  failed. 

11  Sermon  at  St.  Giles',  Cripplegate  (February  3,  1916),  reported  in 
the  Christian  World  Pulpit  (February  16,  1916). 

12  The  Guardian  (July  20,  1916).    So,  the  Anglican  Bishop  of  Edin- 
burgh said  in  June,  1916,  "the  unexpected  hindrances  that  we  found  in 

265 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

Chelmsford  seems  to  have  formed  on  this  point  a  theology 
of  his  own.  "Why,"  he  is  reported  to  have  asked,  "did 
God  not  interfere  in  the  war?"  "It  seemed  as  if  God  Him- 
self were  sitting  on  the  fence."  How  could  we  get  Him 
to  come  down  on  our  side,  and  give  us  a  mighty  victory?" 
The  bishop's  answer  seemed  to  be  that  God  is  bound  by 
his  own  nature  to  interfere  in  war  on  the  side  of  the  more 
moral  nation.  By  abandoning  such  moral  offenses  as 
"strikes,  slackness  in  work,  dishonesty  in  contracts,  and 
drink"  we  shall  "get  God  out  of  His  dilemma  and  make 
it  possible  for  Him  to  come  and  give  us  victory."13  All 
these  views  seemed  rather  to  be  forced  from  the  bishops 
by  the  need  of  meeting  objections,  than  held  with  a  confi- 
dent sense  of  illumination.  And  none  of  the  bishops 
seemed  to  attempt,  as  the  theologians  of  all  parties  in  the 
sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries  attempted,  to  think 
out  with  logical  thoroughness  the  implications  of  their 
metaphysical  beliefs. 

Closely  connected  with  the  metaphysical  problem  of 
divine  omnipotence  and  benevolence  is  the  problem  of  the 
efficacy  of  prayer.  On  this  point  I  read,  during  the  war, 
very  many  Anglican  ecclesiastical  pronouncements,  and 
always  with  the  same  feeling  of  the  absence  either  of  clear 

Gallipoli  and  Mesopotamia  ...  are  designed  to  awaken  a  spirit  of  de- 
pendence on  God"  (The  Christian  World  Pulpit,  June  28,  1916).  The 
very  able  High  Church  leader,  the  late  Dr.  J.  N.  Figgis,  put  the  same 
thought  somewhat  differently,  "God  .  .  .  acts  precisely  like  a  wise  hu- 
man parent.  You  may  have  boons,  gifts,  pleasures  that  you  are  willing 
and  indeed  desirous  to  give  to  your  children,  but  you  will  teach  them  that 
they  are  not  to  have  them  unless  they  ask  properly"  (The  Christian 
World  Pulpit,  September  13,  1916). 

« Church  Times  (February  18,  1916).  The  Editor  of  the  Church 
Times  on  this  occasion  blames  the  bishop  for  his  reckless  choice  of 
words. 

266 


THE  CHURCH 

conviction  or  serious  intellectual  effort.  At  the  opening 
of  the  war  the  prevalent  ecclesiastical  view  seemed  to  be 
that  the  more  we  pray  the  more  likely  is  God  to  give  us 
the  victory.14  Throughout  the  war  this  doctrine  remained 
articulate.  The  Editor  of  the  Guardian  on  February  2, 
1916,  stated  that  "for  times  of  war  the  locus  classicus  ob- 
viously occurs  in  the  Old  Testament"  and  quoted  Cowper, 

When  Moses  stood  with  arms  spread  wide, 
Success  was  found  on  Israel's  side; 
But  when  through  weariness  they  failed, 
That  moment  Amalek  prevailed. 

Admiral  Sir  David  Beatty  was  often  praised  for  the 
letter  to  the  Society  for  the  Promotion  of  Christian 
Knowledge  in  which  he  said,  "Until  religious  revival  takes 
place  at  home  just  so  long  will  the  war  continue.  When 
she  [England]  can  look  out  on  the  future  with  humbler 
eyes  and  a  prayer  on  her  lips,  then  we  can  begin  to  count 
the  days  before  the  end."15  The  Anglican  Bishop  of  Edin- 
burgh put  forward  a  curious  Gnostic  theory  that  "the 
spiritual  forces  that  are  liberated  by  our  prayers"  are 
helpless  in  respect  to  such  obvious  and  calculable  military 
factors  as  "equipments  and  munitions,"  but  powerful  in 
regard  to  such  "unknown  and  unexpected  factors"  as  "the 
wind,  the  rain,  the  light,  the  health  and  temperament  of 
the  general."16 

14  The  Bishop  of  London  used  his  great  influence  to  encourage  the 
formation  of  "prayer  chains"  which  should  make  it  certain  that  prayer 
should  go  on  without  a  break  for  twenty-four  hours.    See  Church  Times 
(August  14,  1914,  and  December  18,  1914). 

15  Quoted  in  Public  Opinion  (February  n,  1916). 

16  Sermon  reported  in  the  Christian  World  Pulpit   (June  28,  1916). 
"Not  only  our  righteous  cause  but  our  armies  and  our  fleet  and  those 

267 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

But,  as  the  war  went  on,  the  moral  and  metaphysical 
difficulties  involved  in  the  popular  Old  Testament  con- 
ception that  prayers  by  their  mere  urgency  influence  the 
result  of  battles  made  themselves  felt.  The  Dean  of  St. 
Paul's  excited  some  resentment  in  February,  1916,  by 
quoting  the  saying  of  Christ  which  forbids  Christians  to 
"use  vain  repetitions  as  the  heathen  do,"  and  by  arguing 
that  we  should  not  "pester  the  Deity."17  In  1916  the 
phrase  generally  used  on  the  subject  by  the  more  responsi- 
ble ecclesiastical  authorities  was  that  by  humbling  our- 
selves before  God  we  should  show  ourselves  "worthy  of 
victory."18  Yet  the  new  phrase  seemed  to  me  itself  to 
cover  a  certain  deficiency  in  intellectual  thoroughness.  It 
seemed  to  suggest  that  prayer  would  in  fact  lead  to  vic- 
tory without  definitely  saying  so.  There  is  a  more  definite 
note  in  the  Kaiser's  address  to  his  troops  in  December, 

of  our  Allies  depend  upon  our  prayers  at  least  as  much  as  they  do  on 
the  equipment  and  munitions  with  which  we  supply  them.  Can  we  not 
learn — shall  we  not  learn — that  prayer  reaches  places  where  the  wit  of 
man  can  never  find  a  way?  Is  it  not  true  that  the  more  we  know  of 
engagements  and  battles  the  more  we  find  out  how  much  they  depend 
on  some  unknown  and  unexpected  factor — the  wind,  the  rain,  the  light, 
the  health  and  temperament  of  the  general  who  is  acting — elements  quite 
beyond  the  power  of  guns  and  men  and  valor  and  strategy?  And  does 
not  the  Word  of  God  teach  us  again  and  again  that  it  is  just  these  very 
factors  that  are  so  susceptible  to  the  spiritual  forces  that  are  liberated 
by  our  prayers?" 

17  See  letters  in  the  Times  from  Sir  H.  Craik  and  Dean  Inge  (Febru- 
ary 16  and  17,  1916). 

18  See  e.g.,  New  Year's  message  from  the  Bishop  of  Winchester  at 
Worcester  in  the  Guardian  of  January  6,  1916.     See  also  a  sermon  by 
Canon  Rees  (July  22,  1915).    The  circular  addressed  to  me  by  my  own 
Vicar  before  the  National  Mission  (July,  1916)  stated  that  "we  have  no 
right  to  look  for  the  restoration  of  peace  unless  we  are  trying  to  make 
ourselves  worthy  of  it — indeed  it  is  possible  that  God  is  awaiting  our 
true  conversion  to  Him  to  end  the  war." 

268 


THE  CHURCH 

1916,  "The  act  is  in  God's  hands  as  is  our  whole  struggle. 
He  will  decide  upon  it,  and  we  will  leave  it  to  Him.  We 
must  not  argue  with  His  orderings.  We  will  be  grateful 
to  Him  that  we  have  thus  far  the  honor  to  be  His  instru- 
ment in  the  divine  judgment  that  has  come  upon  our 
enemies.  Let  the  decision  fall  as  it  will.  The  hewing 
will  proceed  further  till  the  adversary  has  enough"  (West- 
minster Gazette,  December  19,  1916). 

But  the  current  psychology  of  the  Church  of  England 
seemed  to  me  during  the  war  to  be  a  more  important  cause 
of  practical  weakness  than  its  metaphysic.  Recent  analy- 
sis of  the  subconscious  in  man,  combined  with  enquiries 
into  primitive  religion,  have  turned  the  attention  of  all 
students  to  the  origin  of  the  impulses  and  emotions  which 
are  stimulated  by  sacramental  ritual.  The  psychology  of 
the  subconscious  may  indeed  ultimately  be  found  to  have 
influenced  thought  about  Christianity  more  than  the 
astronomy  of  Copernicus,  or  the  philosophy  of  Descartes, 
or  the  biology  of  Darwin.  Some  of  the  ablest  High 
Church  ecclesiastics  base  on  recent  psychological  dis- 
coveries a  claim  both  for  the  practical  efficiency  and  the 
speculative  truth  of  Catholic  sacramentalism.  Dr.  Chan- 
dler, for  instance,  the  Bishop  of  Bloemfontein,  who  had 
watched  the  primitive  rites  of  the  South  African  Kaffirs, 
wrote  in  1911  a  comparison  of  the  "Dionysiac"  element 
in  primitive  religion  with  the  intellectual  element  in  Eng- 
lish Moderate  Churchmanship.  "In  the  worship  of  Diony- 
sus we  recognize  a  passionate  hunger  for  life  and  immor- 
tality, a  real  religion  which  springs  from  real  human 
yearnings  and  intuitions,  and  which  smacks  of  the  soil  of 
its  origin  in  its  strange  union  of  the  playful  and  grotesque 
with  a  fierce  and  savage  ecstasy.  Compared  to  Dionysus, 

269 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

Apollo  is  a  mere  bloodless  creation  of  poetical  imagina- 
tion, a  statue  that  can  never  come  to  life.  The  worship 
of  Apollo  corresponds  to  a  cold  and  stately  service  of 
Matins  as  rendered  in  an  English  cathedral;  that  of 
Dionysus  combines  the  profundity  of  a  solemn  Eucharist 
with  the  orgies  of  the  Salvation  Army  (p.  15).  .  .  .  The 
primitive  instinct  of  religion  seized  upon  sacrifice  as  the 
one  essential  rite  in  which  it  could  find  a  natural  and  ade- 
quate satisfaction  for  itself  (p.  33).  ...  It  is  very  obvious 
how  the  force  of  these  primitive  rites  is  expressed  in  Chris- 
tianity by  the  doctrine  of  the  sacrifice  of  Christ,  God  and 
Man,  a  sacrifice  which  effects  reconciliation  or  atonement, 
and  the  merits  of  which  are  applied  to  individuals  by  the 
communion  with  God  which  is  secured  in  the  Eucharistic 
feast  (p.  34).  .  .  .  If  we  value  the  natural  and  primitive 
instincts  of  religion,  which  we  have  recognized  to  be  the 
foundation  of  revealed  truth,  then  a  revelation  which  thus 
marvellously  justifies  and  perfects  them  must  gain 
thereby,  to  say  the  least,  a  very  strong  claim  on  our  con- 
sideration (p.  3S)."19 

Mr.  C.  E.  Osborne,  Rector  of  Wallsend-on-Tyne,20  one 
of  the  ablest  of  the  leaders  of  the  Anglo-Catholic  move- 
ment, is  even  more  explicit.  He  says,  "In  all  ages  com- 
munion of  the  worshippers  .  .  .  with  the  God  and  with 
one  another  is  effected  and  expressed  by  means  of  a  sacred 
feast,  the  'eating  with  the  God,'  or  'eating  the  God,'  in 
Hebrew  language  the  'eating  bread  before  Yahveh.'  The 
Eucharist  in  some  form  or  other  is  as  old  as  religion  and  as 

19  Faith  and  Experience:   An  Analysis  of  the  Factors  of  Religious 
Knowledge.     By  Arthur  Chandler,  Bishop  of  Bloemfontein.     London 
(1911). 

20  Author  of  Religion  in  Europe  and  the  World  Crisis  (1916). 

270 


THE  CHURCH 

world-wide.  Only  as  religions  become  philosophies  do 
they  cease  to  be  sacramental.  Mohammedanism  is,  of 
course,  an  exception,  but  it  is  a  comparatively  modern 
religion.  Buddhism  is  in  essence  a  philosophy.  All  nai've 
original  religions,  not  smelling  of  the  lamp,  not  children 
of  the  brain,  but  springing  as  it  were  direct  from  the  soil, 
have  been  sacramental  religions.  The  fact  that  of  all  re- 
ligious services,  the  Eucharist  or  Mass  is  that  which  draws 
and  holds  great  bodies  of  worshippers  in  Christendom, 
and  among  those  worshippers  large  numbers  of  men  (as 
conspicuously  in  Russia  as  in  the  West)  ...  is  im- 
mensely significant  ...  the  instinctive  common-sense  of 
the  humanity  of  the  common  people  even  when  baptized 
into  so  spiritual  a  religion  as  Christianity,  remains  incor- 
rigibly sacramental,  wedded  to  the  concrete,  as  far  as  it 
has  any  religious  sense.  It  cannot  grasp  an  academic  re- 
ligion."21 In  the  great  struggle  now  going  on  between 
Mohammedan  monotheism  and  primitive  paganism  in 
Africa  Mr.  Osborne  would  obviously  be  on  the  side  of 
paganism. 

The  arguments  of  writers  like  Bishop  Chandler  and 
Mr.  Osborne  seem  often  to  involve  one  of  two  assump- 
tions; either  that  for  the  purpose  of  sacramental  apolo- 
getic the  reality  of  the  sacramental  emotion  is  a  sufficient 
proof  of  its  supernatural  origin;  or  that  in  dealing  with 
non-rational  facts  one  need  not  argue  rationally — since 
he  "who  drives  fat  oxen  should  himself  be  fat."  On  the 
other  hand,  Dr.  Inge,  the  Dean  of  St.  Paul's,  who  is  him- 
self a  mystic  of  a  more  intellectualist  type,  admits  that 

21  Church  Times  (March  31,  1916).  Sermon  on  Sacraments  and  Com- 
mon Sense. 

271 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

primitive  rites  satisfy  instinctive  cravings,  but  seems  to 
argue  that  the  calculated  adoption  of  an  irrational  mental 
attitude  by  a  modern  church  in  the  modern  world  must 
result  in  intellectual  superficiality  and  moral  weakness. 
Describing  the  state  of  English  society  before  the  war,  he 
says:  "The  greater  part  of  our  lives  so  far  as  we  are  mas- 
ters of  our  time,  was  taken  up  with  playing  at  emotions 
which  were  once  serious  things  in  the  days  of  primitive 
man,  but  which  now  only  survive  as  irrational  promptings 
to  do  things  for  which  civilization  provides  no  outlet. 
The  life  of  the  savage  is  mainly  taken  up  with  fighting, 
which  he  regards  as  a  semi-religious  exercise,  and  dresses 
up  in  his  best  finery  to  perform  it,  in  hunting  for  his  daily 
food,  and  in  deprecating  the  malevolence  of  unknown 
spiritual  powers  by  sacrifices,  incantations,  and  queer 
ritual.  All  these  things  we  have  been  diligently  playing 
at,  in  order,  if  we  knew  it,  to  gain  what  Aristotle  calls  'a 
purgation  of  the  emotions,'  a  relief  from  vague  inarticu- 
late desires.  .  .  .  Instead  of  hunting  we  massacre  harm- 
less birds  and  animals  bred  for  the  purpose.  And  is 
not  too  much  of  our  religion  in  its  most  fashionable  forms 
a  sort  of  playing  at  the  sombre  superstitions  of  the 
savage,  carefully  disguised  in  decent  and  aesthetic  forms? 
And  all  this  make-believe  is  so  utterly  futile  and  barren. 
It  soothes  the  savage  nature  in  us,  and  makes  us  super- 
ficially at  peace  with  ourselves;  but  how  lamentably 
superficial  it  all  is,  and  how  entirely  out  of  connection 
with  all  the  realities  of  life."22 

The  Dean's  argument  was  pushed  still  further  in  a  quite 

"Sermon  by  the  Dean  of  St.  Paul's  in  the  Temple  Church,  The 
Guardian  (October  8,  1914). 

272 


THE  CHURCH 

extraordinarily  touching  and  penetrating  sermon  (which  I 
wish  that  I  could  quote  in  full)  by  the  late  Canon  H.  Scott 
Holland  on  June  4,  1916.  Referring  to  "our  new  dis- 
covery of  the  range  and  survey  of  the  subconscious"  he 
says:  "We  have  for  the  first  time  become  distinctly  aware 
of  that  dim  underworld  that  lies  below  the  level  of  our 
actual  vision,  and  yet  plays  so  vital  a  part  in  coloring  each 
thought  and  action.  .  .  .  From  below  and  from  beneath 
the  level  of  conscious  life  there  surges  up  out  of  the  depth 
of  nature  a  strange  multitudinous  movement  going  far 
back  into  the  regions  of  vegetable  and  animal  life  through 
which  we  emerge  into  daylight.  .  .  .  Our  Christianity 
is  not  in  the  least  afraid  to  acknowledge  how  deep  our 
roots  go  down  into  the  hidden  soil  of  the  underworld. 
But  none  of  this  avails  to  cancel  the  compensating  truth 
which  is,  that,  small  as  is  the  space  which  consciousness 
illumines,  nevertheless  in  that  illuminated  spot  lies  the 
key  to  our  whole  position.  There,  in  it,  is  laid  out  the 
arena  on  which  the  spiritual  battle  is  lost  and  won.  .  .  . 
It  is  on  this  supreme  importance  of  consciousness  that 
the  faith  of  Jesus  Christ  lays  all  its  emphasis.  There  are 
religions,  as  we  know,  which  tend  in  the  other  direction. 
They  invite  man  to  communion  with  the  Divine  by  swoon- 
ing back  into  those  inarticulate  and  unreasoning  abysses 
of  emotion  in  which  personal  and  individual  consciousness 
is  lost.  But  the  Jew  has  passed  on  the  word  to  the  Chris- 
tian church  that  truth  has  not  to  be  sought  in  chants  or 
ecstasy,  but  in  the  reasonable  hope  of  prophecy.  .  .  . 
Thought  and  will  must  come  out  into  the  open  and  make 
their  venture.  'For  judgment  am  I  come  into  the  world'; 
to  force  a  decisive  choice  upon  the  indeterminate  elusive 
soul.  The  stress  of  life  comes  to  its  climax  in  that  de- 

273 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

cision."23  If  Canon  Scott  Holland  were  still  alive,  I 
should  ask  him  whether  he  is  sure  that  if  the  growing 
generation  of  young  wide-minded  men  and  women  follow 
his  advice,  if  their  "thought  and  will  come  out  into  the 
open  and  make  their  venture,"  that  venture  will  neces- 
sarily lead  to  catholic  orthodoxy.  He  himself  had  gone 
far  from  the  nai've  apologetic  of  Archbishop  Whately, 
"If  you  admit  .  .  .  Paul's  epistles  to  be  genuine,  and 
not  the  work  of  a  fool,  or  a  madman,  or  an  impostor,  he 
must  have  been  inspired  because  he  says  so."24  But 
meanwhile  to  many  young  Anglican  priests  the  leader- 
ship of  Bishop  Chandler  and  Mr.  Osborne,  the  policy  of 
"The  Mass  for  the  Masses,"25  will  make  an  irresistible 
appeal.  The  rites  which  he  will  use  as  a  "Catholic"  are 
of  tried  efficacy,  and  his  daily  experience  indicates  to 
him  that  the  more  intellectualist  forms  of  worship  de- 

23  The  Commonwealth  (July,  1916).    Part  of  this  sermon  is  printed 
in  the  Philosophy  of  Faith  (H.  Scott  Holland,  1920),  and  I  have  cor- 
rected two  misprints  from  it.    The  Commonwealth  version  is  later  and 
much  better. 

24  Life,  Vol.  I,  p.  424  (1839),  Canon  Scott  Holland  may  have  indi- 
cated one  side  of  his  own  intellectual  position  when  he  said  in  the  same 
sermon,  "We  know  that  to  recover  confidence  we  shall  have  to  go  down 
to  the  very  ground  of  our  life  and  test  and  sift  and  prove  what  it  is  that 
will  stand  unshaken  in  the  day  of  the  Lord  .   .  .  the  platitudes  on  which 
we  have  confidently  rested  break  from  under  us.  .    .    .  Men  are  .    .    . 
ignorant  of  what  they  themselves  intend    .    .    .    they  cannot  commit 
themselves  .    .    .  they  are  evidently  taking  stock  of  themselves.   .    .    . 
They  have  got  to  do  a  lot  of  thinking  before  they  know  where  they 
stand.  .   .   .  Such  is  our  mood  surely.  .    .   .  And  then  [the  Church]  be- 
lieves that  there  will  come  at  last  the  Hour  of  Speech:  the  hour  of  the 
conscious  and  free  Word."  If  so,  it  may  be  that  death  came  on  him  be- 
fore his  thinking  was  completed. 

25  This  phrase  is  often  used,  see  e.g.,  the  reference  to  it  by  the  Bishop 
of  Carlisle,  Hibbert  Journal  (January,  1917),  p.  239. 

274 


THE  CHURCH 

veloped  in  the  English  Church  during  the  seventeenth 
and  eighteenth  centuries  are  losing  their  power  to  attract. 
The  letters  and  sermons  in  the  Church  Times  reveal  an 
agonizing  sense  of  futility  produced  by  what  Dr.  Dear- 
mer  calls  "the  dismal  turning  of  the  Hanoverian  prayer 
wheel/'26  the  recitation  of  the  morning  and  evening  ser- 
vices of  the  Prayer  Book  to  inattentive  congregations  in 
churches  half-empty  on  Sundays  and  nearly  empty  on 
week-days.  "Men,"  writes  one  clergyman,  "who  have 
faced  death  in  the  trenches  .  .  .  will  never  be  content 
to  sit  in  a  hypnotic  trance  while  prayers,  psalms,  and 
lessons,  are  read  over  to  them";27  and  another  writes:  "I 
suppose  no  one  except  the  priest  of  a  country  parish  can 
realize  the  absolute  indifference  to  religion  which  prevails. 
Such  'religion'  as  may  exist  to  the  English  rustic  is  really 
a  sort  of  pantheism.  God  is  either  rather  a  disagreeable 
man  responsible  for  all  their  troubles,  or  a  negligible 
quantity.  People  know  nothing  about  the  Sacraments 
and  care  less.  The  proportion  of  communicants  is  infini- 
tesimal."28 With  the  bored  indifference  of  the  Anglican 
"parade  service"  the  Anglo-Catholic  Army  Chaplains  con- 
trasted the  fervor  of  the  Breton  soldier  at  the  Roman 
Mass  and  the  religious  ecstasy  which  they  read  of  as 
existing  throughout  the  whole  Russian  Army.  "The 
remedy,"  declared  Father  Bull  (one  of  the  most  impor- 
tant of  the  Anglo-Catholic  leaders),  "was  to  make  the 
Eucharist  the  parade  service.  Experience  proved  that 
when  men  saw  the  Sacraments  they  desired  them."29 

26  Church  Times  (January  19,  1917). 

27  Letter  signed  R.  B.  Nevitt,  Church  Times  (April  14,  1916). 

28  Church  Times  (April  28,  1916).    Letter  signed  "A  Parish  Priest." 

29  Church  Times  (February  25,  1916).    Speech  by  Fr.  Paul  Bull  at  a 
meeting  of  the  English  Church  Union. 

275 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

Priests,  indeed,  from  the  stone  ages  onward,  have  stood 
before  armies,  not  to  repeat  familiar  and  indifferent  words, 
but  to  do  medicine  for  victory,  and  to  deepen  thereby 
the  instinctive  sense  of  comradeship  which  men,  like  all 
other  gregarious  animals,  feel  when  assembled  to  resist 
their  enemies.  The  only  objection  to  the  claim  of  sacra- 
mental Christianity  to  be  both  an  efficient  war  instrument 
and  an  efficient  world  religion  is  that  implied  in  M.  Bar- 
busse's  account  of  the  airman  flying  above  the  lines  in 
France  and  seeing  the  mass  performed  simultaneously  at 
French  and  German  altars  for  the  success  of  both 
armies.30  But  to  me  that  objection  is  unanswerable. 

The  main  defect,  indeed,  of  sacramental  emotion  as  a 
basis  for  religion  is  its  want  of  connection  with  any  gen- 
eral ethical  scheme.  Primitive  religion,  we  are  told  by 
anthropologists,  was  not  ethical;  it  mainly  originated  in 
the  "early  science"  of  magic,  i.e.,  in  the  performance,  not 
necessarily  accompanied  by  any  strong  emotion,31  of  rites 
considered  necessary  for  the  success  of  the  crops  and  the 
health  of  the  tribe  and  of  its  herds.  Only  those  rites  now 
survive  which  are  accompanied  by  strong  emotional  ef- 
fects. But  the  emotions  produced  by  them  do  not  point 
to  any  clear  line  of  conduct.  They  may  strengthen  any 
ethical  impulse  which  happens  to  be  already  current  in 
the  group  which  practises  them,  but  they  add  nothing  of 
their  own;  we  are  told,  for  instance,  that  Spanish  brigands 

80  Le  Feu,  p.  282  (translation  by  W.  Fitzwater  Wray) . 

81  See  B.  Malinowski,  Journal  of  the  Anthropological  Institute  (July- 
December,  1916),  pp.  380  and  382  on  the  ioba  or  ceremonial  hunting 
away  of  the  spirits  in  the  Trobiand  Islands.    "There  is  no  doubt  that  the 
ioba  ...  is  a  matter  of  importance.    It  would  never  on  any  account 
be  omitted  .    .    .  but  in  its  performance  it  has  no  traces  of  sanctity  or 
even  seriousness." 

276 


THE  CHURCH 

take  the  Sacrament  as  a  means  of  success  in  their  occu- 
pation. In  a  highly  industrialized  society  like  that  of 
England  the  current  morality  generally,  though  not  al- 
ways, indicates  socially  useful  conduct  in  the  customary 
"short-range"  relations  of  a  man  with  his  neighbors. 
When  practised  by  men  and  women  of  naturally  humane 
instincts  who  have  been  influenced  by  the  recorded  say- 
ings of  Jesus  they  produce  from  time  to  time  lives  which 
it  would  be  an  impertinence  to  praise.  But  experience 
shows  that  sacramental  religion  does  not  of  itself  and  by 
itself  offer  any  clear  guide  in  the  "long-range"  ethical 
problems  which  involve  different  social  or  racial  groups 
with  different  ethical  customs,  or  in  new  problems  which 
have  not  yet  become  questions  of  custom.  Yet  it  is  in 
respect  to  new  and  long-range  problems  that  our  biologi- 
cally inherited  instincts  are  now  least  helpful,  and  the 
socially  inherited  world-outlook  which  religion  claims  to 
provide  is  most  important.  The  Archdeacon  of  London32 
spoke  in  1917  of  the  thousands  who  were  "living  or  try- 
ing to  live  up  to  the  standard  life  of  a  weekly  communi- 
cant." What  is  that  "standard  life"  in  respect  to  those 
international  or  industrial  relations  on  which  the  very 
existence  of  modern  civilization  depends?  The  Church 
Times  in  1914  quoted  "the  scandal  of  German  militarism" 
as  a  proof  of  the  ill  effects  of  German  modernism,  and  as 
showing  "how  the  paths  diverging  from  the  Catholic  be- 
lief have  led  to  the  rejection  of  the  old  ethical  standard."33 
But  when,  in  the  matter  of  militarism,  did  that  "old  ethi- 
cal standard"  actually  prevail  among  the  body  of  faithful 

32  Church  Times  (September  14,  1917). 

33  Ibid.  (November  6,  1914). 

277 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

Catholics?  Was  it  in  the  days  of  Constantine,  or  Hilde- 
brand,  or  Simon  de  Montfort,  or  Bossuet? 

On  the  other  hand,  the  duty  of  performing  accurately 
the  rite  is  always  clear;  and  sacramental  religions  there- 
fore tend  to  exalt  ritual  above  a  rational  calculation  of 
the  effects  of  conduct.  If  Europe,  for  instance,  is  to  re- 
cover permanently  from  the  disaster  of  the  war,  the  prob- 
lem of  human  reproduction  is  at  least  as  important  as  the 
problem  of  nutrition;  and  every  politician  knows  that 
clear  thought  and  wise  action  on  that  subject  will  be  hin- 
dered by  the  organized  opposition  of  the  clergy  of  the 
Church  of  England.  Marriage  is  one  of  the  Catholic 
sacraments,  and  almost  the  whole  Catholic  party  believe, 
on  sacramental  grounds,  that  a  marriage  once  con- 
summated should  be  indissoluble.  At  present  the  law 
(created  by  decisions  of  the  courts  but  unchangeable 
without  an  Act  of  Parliament)  is  that  if  a  man  after  mar- 
riage contracts  syphilis  and  infects  his  wife,  so  that  she 
is  henceforward  incapable  of  bearing  healthy  children, 
she  may  divorce  him,  marry  again,  and  bear  legitimate 
but  unhealthy  children.  If  he  contracts  syphilis,  but 
does  not  infect  his  wife,  she  may  get  a  separation  from 
him,  but  may  not  divorce  him  and  may  not  bear  healthy 
and  legitimate  children.34 

Sacramentalism,  in  spite  of  its  obvious  efficiency  in 
stimulating  emotion,  has  the  further  disadvantage  of 
strengthening  the  most  dangerous  tendencies  of  the 
Church  considered  as  a  guild  of  organized  producers. 
Ordination  is  a  Catholic  sacrament,  which  gives  super- 
natural authority  to  the  claim  of  the  properly  ordained 

84  The  Guardian  calls  the  whole  theory  of  eugenics  "the  ethics  of  the 
farmyard  applied  to  humanity"  (March  2,  1916). 

278 


clergy  to  a  monopoly  in  the  exercise  of  spiritual  authority. 
It  is  therefore  possible  to  find  in  the  Church  more  clearly 
than  anywhere  else  the  typical  faults  of  the  guild  outlook: 
the  hatred  of  the  schismatic  blackleg,  the  fear  of  the  shock 
to  mental  habit  caused  by  the  inventiveness  of  the  heretic, 
the  insistence  that  the  guildsman  alone  shall  fix,  on  a  basis 
which  constantly  tends  to  narrow  itself,  the  terms  of  entry 
to  the  guild.  The  clergyman's  profession  is  on  one  side 
that  of  a  teacher,  and  his  teaching  impulse  is,  like  that 
of  other  teachers,  naturally  intermittent;  but  he  claims 
supernatural  authority  for  his  guild  dislike  of  the  idea 
of  an  intermittent  exercise  of  his  office:  "Once  a  priest 
always  a  priest." 

From  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century  to  the 
recent  rapid  growth  of  the  High  Church  party  the  cor- 
porate feeling  of  the  Anglican  clergy  has  been  that  rather 
of  the  social  class  of  "gentlemen,"  consisting  mainly  of 
laymen,  than  that  of  a  supernaturally  privileged  guild 
of  ecclesiastics.  This  is  no  longer  true,  and  is  becoming, 
especially  among  the  urban  clergy,  every  year  less  true. 
One  of  the  causes  and  effects  of  this  combination  of  a 
growing  professionalism  in  the  Church  with  a  growing 
emphasis  on  the  subconscious  mind  as  against  the  con- 
scious reason,  is  an  acknowledged  lowering  of  the  stand- 
ard both  of  natural  ability  and  of  acquired  education 
among  those  who  become  clergymen.  The  report  of  the 
Archbishops'  Committee  on  the  Teaching  Office  of  the 
Church  (1919)  says  (p.  8),  "There  has  been  a  tendency 
to  contrast  the  intellectual  with  the  spiritual.  .  .  .  The 
result  has  been  a  depreciation  and  a  fear  of  the  honest 
operation  of  the  intellect  .  .  .  fewer  able  men  seek  ordi- 

279 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

nation."35  At  the  same  time  some  of  the  more  extreme 
sacramentalists  disparage  the  English  tradition  that  an 
Anglican  priest  should  always  be  a  highly  educated  man. 
"Priests,"  says  the  Editor  of  the  Church  Times  (April  7, 
1916),  "may  be  found  in  abundance  among  men  of  less 
education  than  has  recently  been  demanded  in  candidates 
for  Holy  Orders.  .  .  .  Men  of  little  education  can  minis- 
ter the  sacraments  and  do  much  of  the  routine  work  re- 
quired. ...  If  the  English  people,  like  the  Russians, 
were  in  the  habit  of  frequenting  the  sacraments,  and 
seeking  the  ministration  of  the  priesthood  as  a  matter  of 
course,  the  problem  would  be  simplified."  And  again:  "It 
is  most  desirable  that  people  shall  be  taught  that  we  make 
our  confession  to  a  priest  because  he  is  a  priest  with  super- 
natural powers,  not  because  he  is  a  man  whom  we  like 
or  trust.  .  .  .  Cases  are  not  unknown  of  people  refusing 
even  to  go  to  confession  when  their  usual  confessor  is  ab- 
sent. It  ...  helps  one  to  understand  what  someone 
.  .  .  meant  when  he  said  that  if  he  had  daughters  he 
would  send  them  to  make  their  first  confession  to  a 
drunken  priest  in  order  that  they  might  understand  that 
it  was  not  the  personality  of  the  man  that  mattered  but 
his  priesthood."36 

35  Bishop  Welldon  (Dean  of  Manchester  and  late  Headmaster  of  Har- 
row School)  argued  in  1915  against  a  large  increase  of  the  episcopate 
because  "the  Church  does  not  attract  so  many  men  of  high  intellectuality 
into  Holy  Orders  as  of  yore"  (Guardian,  October  21,  1915).  See  also 
the  Church  Times  (May  23,  1919)  on  the  "Post  Ordination  Studies  of 
the  Clergy,"  which  says,  "The  intellectual  status  of  the  clergy,  so  far 
from  advancing  pari  passu  with  that  of  the  people,  has  now  for  many 
years  been  declining  not  merely  relatively  but  absolutely.  .  .  .  The 
ideal  of  a  learned  clergy  would  seem  to  have  been  forgotten." 

86  Leader  in  Church  Times  (May  12,  1916). 

280 


THE  CHURCH 

One  effect  of  the  growth  of  sacramental  guild- feeling 
will  be  a  change  in  the  position  of  the  Anglican  Church 
as  a  political  force.  The  Church  will  be  more  independent 
than  it  has  been  of  the  Conservative  Party,  and  will  prob- 
ably take  a  political  line  like  that  of  the  church  in  France 
under  the  Third  Republic  and  in  Germany  and  Italy  and, 
perhaps,  Russia  since  the  war.  The  change  will  be 
quickened  if,  as  seems  now  almost  certain,  the  "establish- 
ment" of  the  Church — the  concordat  which  secures  for 
the  state  the  appointment  of  bishops  and  the  ultimate 
control  of  Church  discipline, — breaks  down,  as  similar 
arrangements  have  broken  down  in  the  rest  of  the  world. 
Many  Anglo-Catholics  openly  call  for  disestablishment.37 
Cabinets  and  Premiers  are  no  longer  predominantly 
Anglican,  and  the  powers  of  self-government  given  to  the 
Church  of  England  by  the  Enabling  Act  of  1920  will  un- 
doubtedly strengthen  the  demand  for  a  real  independence. 
If  the  clergy  secure  the  right  of  appointing  the  bishops 
that  fact  will  undoubtedly  strengthen  the  sacramental 
party,  and  will  tend  to  the  exclusion  of  other  parties.  The 
process  of  disestablishment  will  also  be  accompanied  by 
a  greater  or  less  measure  of  disendowment,  which  will 
leave  the  clergy  with  a  burning  sense  of  injustice  and 
sacrilege.  Judging  from  continental  instances,  the  Church 
will  then  become  a  disruptive  rather  than  a  conservative 
force;  it  will  tend  to  ally  itself  with  the  anti-democratic 

37  See  an  able  article  in  the  New  Statesman  of  August  28,  1920,  de- 
scribing the  Anglo-Catholic  Conference  at  the  Albert  Hall;  "Several 
speakers,  including  two  of  the  most  respected  missionary  bishops,  de- 
nounced the  establishment  in  terms  which  might  have  been  thought  fifty 
years  ago  a  little  strong  at  a  Liberation  Society  meeting,  and  their  de- 
nunciation was  greeted  with  roars  of  applause  from  an  audience  which 
packed  the  great  Hall." 

281 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

guild-feeling  in  the  Trade  Unions,38  and  with  any  anti- 
parliamentary  party  in  the  army  or  elsewhere  which  is 
in  favor  of  the  restoration  of  personal  monarchy.  The 
Coronation  Service  still  bears  traces  of  the  mediaeval 
claim  that  the  authority  of  the  monarch  is  a  delegation 
from  the  sacramental  authority  of  the  Church;  and  the 
Editor  of  the  Church  Times  (January  28,  1916)  argued 
that  "the  eagerness  with  which  the  public  mind  entered 
some  years  ago  into  the  conception  of  the  Coronation 
Service  affords  reason  for  thinking  that  the  nation  would 
rally  around  the  venerable  throne  as  the  centre  of  its 
regulated  life.  Parliamentary  institutions  do  not  appear 
to  have  an  important  future.  Something  more  efficient, 
but  also  making  more  appeal  to  the  imagination  and  the 
religious  sense  is  needed."  In  the  next  number  (Feb- 
ruary 4,  1914)  the  editor  glorified  Charles  I,  and  depre- 
cated the  idea,  "that  it  was  the  King's  duty  to  obey  Parlia- 
ment rather  than  his  conscience."  Such  things  in  times 
of  social  peace  may  be  negligible,  but  in  times  of  social 
strain,  when  perhaps  a  moderate  socialist  government  is 
in  power,  opposed  by  a  syndicalist  minority  and  by  the 
whole  of  the  classes  which  furnish  professional  officers  to 
the  army,  they  may  become  important.  But  while  a  self- 
governing  sacramental  church  with  a  grievance  will  al- 
ways be  ready  to  weaken  the  parliamentary  state,  it  will 
do  so  not  in  the  interests  of  the  responsibility  and  initia- 
tive of  the  individual  citizen,  but  in  the  interests  either  of 

88  See  e.g.,  S.  G.  Hobson,  National  Guilds,  p.  259,  "the  Church  which, 
by  the  way,  is  a  guild."  In  October,  1920,  Dr.  William  Temple  (now 
Bishop  of  Manchester)  said  that  "Guild  Socialism  was  the  system  he 
would  vote  for  if  he  had  the  chance  to-morrow"  (Church  Times, 
October  15,  1920). 

282 


THE  CHURCH 

the  Church  as  a  corporation,  or  of  the  nation  as  an  ideal 
personality.  Dr.  Melville  Scott  expressed  a  widespread 
clerical  feeling  when  he  wrote  to  the  Guardian  (Septem- 
ber 21,  1916),  "The  war  has  put  the  individual  in  his 
proper  place."  During  the  war  I  was  surprised  to  see 
how  completely  British  Catholics  (whether  Anglican  or 
Roman)  accepted  that  subordination  of  the  individual  to 
the  nation  which  was  the  main  count  in  our  case  against 
Prussian  political  thought.  The  Editor  of  the  Church 
Times  wrote  on  September  3,  1915,  "A  French  priest  in 
France  can  be  purely  patriotic  in  his  catholicity;  he  is 
bound  to  pray  for  his  country,  to  act  for  it,  and  in  case 
of  need  even  to  fight  for  it.  A  German  priest  in  Ger- 
many, whatever  he  may  think  privately  of  his  country's 
policy,  is  tied  to  the  same  patriotic  course.  In  either 
case  the  larger  duty  is  fulfilled  by  a  careful  performance 
of  the  smaller,  just  as  the  catholicity  of  a  Christian  man 
is  expressed  by  loyal  adherence  to  his  own  bishop."39 
Father  Bernard  Vaughan,  who  was  the  most  popular  and 
effective  controversialist  among  British  Roman  Catholics, 
wrote  at  the  beginning  of  1916  to  the  Daily  Graphic  in 
favor  of  the  cry,  "Keep  on  killing  Germans."  When 
asked  by  a  correspondent,  "Do  your  Jesuit  Fathers  of 
the  German  province  accept  your  advice  to  keep  on  killing 
Germans?"  he  answered,  "If  they  did,  all  I  would  say 
to  them  would  be  'You  would  be  shot  for  it,  and  it  serves 
you  right.'  "40 

39  An  ex-Army  chaplain  wrote  on  July  20,  1916,  in  the  Guardian  that 
for  a  chaplain  "a  robust  [the  italics  are  mine]  belief  in  the  national  cause 
is  absolutely  vital.    His  opinions  on  the  rightfulness  or  otherwise  of  war 
are  quite  immaterial." 

40  Quoted  in  the  Evening  News  (February  10,  1916). 

283 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

The  chief  point  on  which  a  sacramental  and  independ- 
ent church  will  concentrate  its  efforts  will  be  the  securing 
of  as  much  control  as  possible  in  schools  and  colleges  sup- 
ported by  the  community,  and  the  maintenance  in  the 
schools  so  controlled  of  that  general  mental  attitude  which 
is  called  in  current  educational  controversy  the  "at- 
mosphere." "What  is  wanting,"  says  the  Church  Times, 
"in  English  Christianity  is  the  supernatural  atmosphere 
and  temper"  (May  5,  1916).  A  Church  Times  article 
on  "The  State  of  Religion"  (March  24,  1916)  complains 
also  that  "there  is  no  atmosphere  of  the  supernatural," 
and  urges  that  "the  whole  scheme  of  'religious  knowledge' 
falsely  so  called,  should  be  drastically  reformed,"  that  the 
children  in  church  schools  "from  their  earliest  youth 
should  be  brought  into  touch  with  the  supernatural  by 
being  present  week  by  week  at  the  Holy  Eucharist,  that 
they  should  be  definitely  and  thoroughly  instructed  in  the 
sacramental  system  as  a  whole."  "To  teach  the  doctrine 
of  the  Mass,"  says  the  Editor  of  the  Church  Times  (Jan- 
uary n,  1916),  "without  insisting  on  attendance  at  Mass 
is  as  futile  as  to  attempt  to  teach  horsemanship  by  lec- 
tures in  a  classroom.  The  truth  of  the  Real  Presence  is 
grasped  easily  and  naturally  in  the  presence  of  the  Sacra- 
ment; without  this  it  remains  something  vague  and  ob- 
scure and  unrelated  to  life  and  practice."  The  existing 
religious  lessons  do  not  produce  "a  robust  loyalty  to  the 
Catholic  Church."  From  the  outbreak  of  the  war  till 
the  Russian  revolution  of  1917  British  sacramentalists 
were  never  tired  of  pointing  to  Russia  as  an  instance  of  a 
nation  in  which  this  "atmosphere  of  the  supernatural" 
actually  prevailed.  We  have  seen  since  then,  in  the  pub- 
lished letters  of  the  Czaritsa,  in  the  accounts  of  the  influ- 

284 


THE  CHURCH 

ence  of  Rasputin,  and  in  the  whole  social  history  of 
Russia,  what  are  the  dangers  to  national  life  involved  in 
that  deliberate  return  to  the  world-outlook  of  the  stone 
ages  which  the  Church  Times  advocates  and  the  late  M. 
Podiedonostseff  achieved.41 

No  one,  however,  in  any  modern  industrialized  society 
is  likely  to  be  as  successful  as  was  M.  Podiedonostseff  in 
agricultural  Russia.  What  is  likely  is  that  in  English 
"church  schools"  and  American  "parochial  schools"  a 
minority  of  the  community  will  be  brought  up  (with  in- 
creasing precautions,  as  the  intellectual  difficulties  of 
orthodoxy  increase)  in  the  same  atmosphere  of  the  super- 
natural, and  will  show  in  later  life  the  same  "robust 
loyalty  to  the  Church"  at  elections,  as  do  the  more  re- 
ligious-minded products  of  the  Catholic  schools  in  Paris, 
or  the  Flemish  children  whom  I  saw  waiting  their  turn 
to  kiss  the  glass  cylinder  containing  the  Holy  Blood  at 
Bruges.  Meanwhile,  the  general  fear  of  a  recrudescence 
of  religious  controversy  may,  in  the  case  of  Britain,  tend 

41  It  is  disquieting  to  see  how  easily  the  "atmosphere  of  the  super- 
natural" penetrates  the  minds  even  of  highly  educated  Englishmen  living 
in  contact  with  primitive  thought.  The  Bishop  of  Bunbury  (ex-bishop 
of  Melanesia)  speaking  for  the  Melanesian  Mission  said,  "it  should  be 
an  inducement  to  young  men  to  go  out  to  Melanesia  that  they  had  op- 
portunities there  .  .  .  which  never  occurred  at  home.  They  lived  in  fact 
in  the  atmosphere  of  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles,  the  natives  having  con- 
verse with  spirits  and  performing  acts  that  could  not  be  explained,  and 
the  missionary  seemed  to  be  endowed  with  special  power  to  deal  with 
these  manifestations  of  an  evil  power"  (Church  Times,  June  n,  1920). 
In  a  letter  in  the  Church  Times  of  April  17,  1919,  the  writer  says,  "When 
I  was  Town  Major  of  a  village  near  Doullens  last  June  I  saw  the  box 
palm  of  the  previous  Palm  Sunday  being  used  by  an  old  lady  to  sprinkle 
with  holy  water  the  door-posts  of  her  house  and  bams  in  view  of  an 
approaching  storm.  What  a  pity  it  is  that  we  cannot  be  more  simple  in 
our  religion." 

285 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

to  maintain  such  compromises  as  the  wooden  "Cowper 
Temple"  bible  lessons  in  the  municipal  elementary 
schools,  and  the  numbing  conventional  Anglicanism  of  the 
secondary  endowed  "public  schools."42  It  is  difficult 
enough  to  teach  boys  and  girls  to  watch  for  and  welcome 
that  feeling  of  vague  discomfort  which,  if  resolutely  fol- 
lowed up,  is  the  precursor  of  creative  thought.43  But  if, 
in  the  case  of  the  most  important  of  all  subjects,  they  are 
either  definitely  warned  against  that  feeling  as  "doubt," 
or  are  discouraged,  by  the  silent  example  of  their  teach- 
ers, from  the  venture  of  thought  and  will  for  which 
Canon  Scott  Holland  pleaded,  the  difficulty  is  enormously 
increased. 

What,  then,  ought  "men  and  women  of  good  will"  who 
are  "beyond  the  frontiers  of  the  Christian  Society"  to  do 
in  answer  to  the  Archbishop's  appeal?  There  are,  I 
think,  two  courses  open  to  them.  The  first  is  that  for 
which  Disraeli  so  ably  argued.  "If,"  he  said  in  1861,  in 
an  obviously  sincere  letter  to  his  old  friend  Mrs.  Brydges 
Willyams,  "the  Church  were  to  fall,  philosophy  would 
not  profit:  we  should  only  be  handed  over  to  a  narrow- 
minded  and  ignorant  fanaticism,"44  by  which  he  means 

42  "Our  disingenuous  Anglican  compromise  is  like  a  cold  in  the  Eng- 
lish head,  and  the  higher  education  in  England  is  a  training  in  evasion" 
(H.  G.  Wells  in  Daily  News,  January  5,  1917). 

43  See  ante,  Chap.  II. 

44  Life,  Vol.  IV,  p.  360.    It  is  interesting  to  see  the  form  which  this 
argument  took  in  an  almost  contemporary  public  pronouncement.    "Man 
is  a  being  born  to  believe.    And  if  no  Church  comes  forward  with  its 
title-deeds  of  truth,  sustained  by  the  tradition  of  sacred  ages  and  by  the 
conviction  of  countless  generations,  to  guide  him,  he  will  find  altars  and 
idols  in  his  own  heart  and  his  own  imagination.  .  .  .  There  are  no  tenets 
however  extravagant,  and  no  practices  however  objectionable,  which  will 

286 


THE  CHURCH 

what  he  called  in  1870  (in  the  General  Preface  to  his 
novels)  "the  medieval  superstitions,  which  are  generally 
only  the  embodiments  of  pagan  ceremonies  and  creeds." 
To  a  man  holding  this  view,  the  control  of  the  church 
by  the  state  is  essential,  and  the  church  so  controlled  be- 
comes the  best  guardian  of  rational  intellectual  freedom 
and  social  coherence.  It  is  to  this  argument  that  the 
Church  of  England  officially  appealed  in  1918,  when  ask- 
ing for  subscriptions  to  a  "Central  Fund."  "By  begin- 
ning in  the  earliest  years  to  form  the  character  of  the 
people,  religious  education  saves  the  nation  from  uncount- 
able evils  and  dangers.  Even  as  a  mere  investment  the 
cost  of  the  work  would  be  well  worth  the  nation's  while, 
through  its  citizens,  to  defray.  The  ideal  of  service,  the 
obligations  of  self-support  and  thrift,  of  temperance, 
soberness  and  chastity  firmly  established  in  the  minds  of 
the  young,  enrich  society."45  To  Disraeli's  view  there  are 
two  obvious  objections.  The  control  of  the  Church  by 
the  state  is  doomed,  and  the  disestablished  church,  en- 
dowed or  disendowed,  will  apparently  be  directed  in  the 
near  future  by  those  forces  which  Disraeli  called  "ig- 
norant fanaticism."  And  Disraeli's  attitude  involves,  on 
the  part  of  those  who  adopt  it,  a  degree  of  personal 
evasion  and  reticence  in  which  Disraeli  himself  delighted, 
but  the  effect  of  which  on  most  men  is  bad.  Disraeli  said 
that  he  held  "the  religion  of  all  sensible  men,"  but  that 
"sensible  men  never  tell"  what  it  is.  Those  who  are  de- 
termined never  to  tell  their  beliefs  seldom  take  the 

not  in  time  develop  under  such  a  state  of  affairs"  (Speech  at  Oxford, 
Life,  Vol.  IV,  p.  371). 

45  Official  appeal  beginning,  "The  Church  of  England  appeals"  .   .   . 
Observer  (November  24,  1918). 

287 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

trouble  to  think  them  out,  and  at  this  moment  I  am  sure 
that  the  "good  form"  and  "good  sense"  which  in  Eng- 
land, and  still  more  in  America,  prevents  so  large  a  pro- 
portion of  educated  men  and  women  from  deciding 
whether  they  accept  or  reject  the  supernatural  claims  of 
Christian  orthodoxy  have  a  real  tendency  to  sterilize  the 
intellectual  life  of  our  nations. 

The  second  course  open  to  "those  beyond  the  frontiers 
of  the  Christian  Society"  is  the  personal  effort  of  clear 
thought  and  frank  speech  on  religious  questions.  Towards 
the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century  someone  said  that  "the 
great  events  of  the  twentieth  century  will  be  events  in  the 
region  of  the  intellect."  So  far  that  prophecy  has  been 
grimly  falsified;  but  the  twentieth  century  is  still  young, 
and  the  prophecy  may  still  be  fulfilled.  Again,  as  in  the 
fifth  century  before  Christ,  or  the  sixteenth  or  eighteenth 
centuries  after  Christ,  men  and  women  may  find  them- 
selves stimulated  by  their  own  intellectual  needs,  and  by 
the  example  of  their  fellows,  to  think  and  speak  on  the 
whole  relation  of  man  to  the  universe.  If  such  a  period 
of  intellectual  energy  occurs,  it  will,  I  believe,  reveal  the 
fact  that  much  of  the  religion  of  Christendom,  and  par- 
ticularly of  the  English-speaking  peoples,  is  in  a  position 
of  unstable  equilibrium.  The  particular  combination  of 
the  tradition  of  a  great  teacher  with  elements  drawn  from 
ancient  mythology  and  contemporary  East  Mediterranean 
religion  and  philosophy,  which  was  formulated  at  Nicaea 
in  325  A.  D.,  may  now  prove  to  be  no  more  firmly  rooted 
than  was  the  Graeco-Roman  state  religion — in  spite  of  its 
temples  and  priesthoods  and  its  intimate  connection  with 
men's  habits  of  thought  and  speech  and  feeling  and  edu- 
cation— when  Lucian  attacked  it  in  the  second  century 

288 


THE  CHURCH 

A.  D.  It  is  true  that  there  is  evidence  which  persuades 
many  observers  that  Christian  orthodoxy  will  maintain 
or  even  increase  its  authority  by  shedding  its  mythology 
and  absorbing  non-Christian  ideas.  But  a  time  comes 
when  a  religion  loses  its  power  of  retaining  its  vitality  in 
a  new  form;  there  were  indications  of  a  corresponding 
transformation  of  the  state  religion  in  the  times  of  Marcus 
Aurelius  and  Porphyry,  but  the  transformed  faith  soon 
died  out.  I  myself  think  it  more  probable  that  the  chil- 
dren or  grandchildren  of  most  of  those  who  reject  the 
main  dogmas  of  Christian  orthodoxy  will  cease  to  call 
themselves  Christians;  and  that  Christian  tradition  will 
come  to  be  represented  in  the  Western  nations  by  a  minor- 
ity of  born  mystics  and  their  followers. 

If  that  happens  what  world-outlook  will  take  the  place 
now  occupied  by  Christianity  in  our  social  heritage,  and 
in  what  way  will  it  affect  the  life  of  mankind?  To  that 
question  no  one,  I  believe,  can  give  a  simple  answer.  New 
religions  of  the  type  of  Buddhism  and  Christianity  and 
Mohammedanism  and  Bahaism,  where  a  supernatural 
mythology  forms  itself  round  the  facts  of  a  religious 
teacher's  life,  will  appear,  but  are  not  likely,  in  the  pres- 
ence of  the  modern  newspaper  reporter  and  photographer, 
and  the  atmosphere  of  modern  science,  to  spread  over  the 
world.  Something  more  like  the  "philosophies"  of  Zeno 
and  Epicurus  in  the  Roman  Empire  may  have  a  better 
chance.  If  our  educational  systems  are  not  starved  by 
war  and  the  consequences  of  war,  they  may  so  develop 
that  whole  populations  will  have  access  to  the  outlines  of 
agreed  knowledge  and  to  the  emotional  appeal  of  great 
literature.  Differences  in  mental  training  may  follow 
differences  of  individual  nature,  and  not  differences  of 

289 


OUR  SOCIAL  HERITAGE 

hereditary  class  or  caste.  If  so,  Bagehot's  assumption 
that  political  authority  must  be  based  on  "the  credulous 
obedience  of  enormous  masses,"  and  the  corresponding 
assumption  underlying  the  phrase,  "the  Mass  for  the 
Masses,"  may  seem  less  convincing  than  they  do  now,  and 
many  social  and  professional  and  racial  hindrances  to  the 
free  exchange  of  thought  may  be  broken  down.  A  book 
of  sayings  by  some  countryman  of  Confucius  or  Laotze, 
who  has  known  Western  civilization  and  has  accepted  it 
without  dread  and  without  illusion  as  an  instrument  of 
the  good  life,  may  then  seem  true,  not  only  in  Pekin  and 
the  cities  of  the  Yangtze  valley,  but  to  many  thoughtful 
men  and  women  in  New  York  and  London  and  Moscow 
and  Milan.  Artisans  and  teachers  and  societies  of  college 
students  may  begin  to  use  some  term  like  "The  Path," 
for  an  ethical  plan  based  on  a  common  world-outlook 
and  making  a  common  emotional  appeal.  It  may  be  that 
there  will  be  several  such  competing  "philosophies,"  exist- 
ing side  by  side  with  many  new  and  old  "religions."  No 
attempt,  such  as  was  made  in  Czarist  Russia,  to  enforce 
religious  uniformity  within  any  nation  by  state  persecu- 
tion is  now  probable. 

But  meanwhile,  in  the  national  educational  systems,  in 
the  celebration  of  great  events,  in  the  use  of  periodical 
days  of  leisure  and  of  reflection,  and  in  many  sides  of 
the  development  of  the  arts  of  music  and  painting  and 
literature,  the  need  will  still  be  felt  for  means  by  which 
emotions  common  to  the  great  majorities  of  whole  popu- 
lations can  be  expressed.  On  November  n,  1918,  as  I 
came  back  from  telling  the  news  of  the  armistice  to  a 
family  of  Belgian  exiles  who  had  wept  with  joy,  I  passed 
the  buildings  of  a  big  endowed  school.  The  boys  were 

290 


THE  CHURCH 

assembled  in  the  hall,  and  were  apparently  singing  all 
the  doggerel  verses  of  "God  Save  the  King."  I  listened, 
trying  to  imagine  the  hymns  that  were  being  sung  before 
other  national  flags  in  all  the  schools  of  the  Allies;  and  a 
conviction  swept  through  me  that  the  special  task  of  our 
generation  might  be  so  to  work  and  think  as  to  be  able 
to  hand  on  to  the  boys  and  girls  who  fifty  years  hence,  at 
some  other  turning  point  of  world-history,  may  gather  hi 
the  schools,  the  heritage  of  a  world-outlook  deeper  and 
wider  and  more  helpful  than  that  of  modern  Christendom. 


291 


INDEX 


Addams  (Jane),  on  a  world  con- 
scious of  itself,  205 
Agamemnon,  212 
Alderton  (Mrs.),  on  Trade  Unions 

and  professions,  12311. 
Althorp  (Lord),  on  the  Poor  Law, 

251 

America,  see  United  States 
American  Civil  War  and  Natural 

Rights,  189 
American    Federation     for    Child 

Study,  52 

Amritsar  and  the  Dyer  incident,  264 
Animals — 

(non    -    human),      cooperation 

among,  55 

social  heritage  in,  17,  18 
Ants,  cooperation  in,  55,  56 
Arabi,  rising  (1881),  183 
Archer  (W.),  on  science,  245 
Aristotle,  influence  of,  38 
Arithmetic,  conception  of  identity 

in,  95,  96 
Army — 

and  monarchy,  231 
British,  largely  industrial,  31 
British,  professional   officers   of, 

69 
German,  31,  76 


vocational  organization  of,  135- 

141 

Arnim  (General  Sixt  von),  76 
Arnold  (M.)— 

influence  of  Rugby  and  Oxford, 
1 80 

on  human  energy,  186 

on  freedom,  178 

psychological   criticism   of   Mill, 

177 

Arnold  (Thomas),  46 
Art— 

and  fatigue,  30,  31 

and  habit,  113 

Arts   and   Science,  distinction   be- 
tween, 146 
Asquith  (H.  H.)— 

and  Ulster,  137,  138 

Dardanelles  Report,  61-66 

on  Liberty,  185 
Astor  (W.  W.),  and  the  Pall  Mall 

Gazette,  138 
Astronomy,  35,  36 
Athens — 

and  social  heritage,  21 

and  idea  of  Liberty,  165 
Augustine  (Saint),  248 
Aurelius  (Marcus),  289 
Austin  (John),  129 
Austria,  breakdown  of,  87 


293 


INDEX 


Baboons,  group  cooperation  in,  56 
Babylon — 

early  speculation  in,  34,  35 

industrial  civilization  of,  31 
Bagehot    (Walter),   on    monarchy, 

224,  238,  243,  290 
Baghdad,  advance  on,  69 
Bagot   (Sir  C.),  letter  from  Can- 
ning, 204 
Bahaism,  289 

Baldwin,  on  social  heredity,  14  n. 
Balfour  (A.  J.)— 

and  Dardanelles  Report,  65 

on  Monarchy,  238 
Barbusse,  Le  Feu,  276 
Barker   (E.),  on  English   sociolo- 
gists, 257 

Beatty  (Admiral),  and  prayer,  267 
Beauty  and  thought,  42,  43 
Beaverbrook  (Lord) — 

and  Mr.  Lloyd  George,  212 

debate  on  his  appointment,  198 
Bees,  group  cooperation  in,  55,  56 
Beethoven,  and  thought  and  beauty, 

43 
Belgium,  invasion  of,  76,  161,  253, 

260 
Bennett  (Arnold)— 

on  the  legal  profession,  124 

on  thought,  41 
Bentham  (J.)— 

and  James  Mill,  250 

and  reconstruction  after  1815,  23 

and  the  legal  profession,  129 

Constitutional  Code,  175 

his  disciples,  175 

on  motive,  129,  249 

on  Natural  Rights,  189 
Bergson  (H.),  and  determinism,  254 
Bernstein  (E.),  261 


Bethmann-Hollweg,  and  peace  sug- 
gestions, 261 
Binet  tests,  97 
Birds,  social  heritage  in,  14 
Bismarck — 

and  Lord  Granville,  183 

and  the  Bundesrat,  219 
Blackstone  (W.),  on  the  army,  136 
Blanc  (Louis),  94 
Bolsheviks  and  determinism,  254 
Bondfield  (Margaret),  217 
Bossuet,  278 

Bottomley    (Horatio)    and    mon- 
archy, 235 

Bradley  (F.  H.),  186 
British  Commonwealth,  238,  240 
British  Empire,  213-215 
Buddhism,  289 

C.  E.  Osborne  on,  270 
Building  Guild,  108 
Bull  (Father),  275 
BUlow  (Prince),  on  British  Policy, 

206 

Bunbury  (Bishop  of),  285 
Bunsen  (C.  K.),  180 
Burke  (E.),  on  judgment,  201 

Cabinet — 
and  monarchy,  230 
Committe  of   Imperial   Defense, 

65 

group  cooperation  in,  65 
"Ca'  canny,"  109,  in 
Caird  (E.),  176 
Callwell  (General),  on  Dardanelles 

expedition,  68 
Calvin  (J.),  248 
Cambridge  (Duke  of) — 

and  army  reform,  173 

and  monarchy,  228 


294 


INDEX 


Canning   (G.),  world  cooperation, 
204 

Canterbury,    Archbishop    of,    258, 
262,  264 

Capital,   and  vocational   organiza- 
tion, 117,  118 

Capitalism — 
and  determinism,  252 
as  means  of  controlling  national 
cooperation,  103,  104 

Carlyle  (T.)— 
on  Liberalism,  176 
on  monarchy,  239 

Carson  (Sir  E.),  137,  206 

Carter  (Major  R.),  and  Mesopo- 
tamia, 72 

Cecil   (Lord  H.),  and  Stockholm, 
216 

Chadwick  (Sir  E.),  175 

Chalmers  (M.  D.),  Local  Govern- 
ment, 174 

Chandler    (Bishop    of    Bloemfon- 
tein),  269,  271,  274 

Charles  I,  Church  Times  on,  282 

Chaucer,  and  mediaeval  universities, 

153 

Chelmsford  (Bishop  of),  266 
Chichester  (Bishop  of),  265 
Children- 
training  in  conception  of  differ- 
ence, 95-96 

training  in  self-conscious  will,  21 
training  in  mental  effort,  46 
China  and  Britain,  242 
Church,  245,  258-291 
and  science,  119 
Anglican — 

alleged  failure  of,  264 
and  education,  283-286 
and  humanitarianism,  259-261 
and  prayer,  266-269 


Enabling  Act,  281 
guild- feeling  in,  279 
metaphysical  outlook,  265-267 
political  position  of,  281-283 
professionalism  in,  279-280 
psychology  of,  269-278 
Lutheran,  in  the  war,  260 
Roman  Catholic,  in  the  war,  260, 
261 

Churchill    (Winston),  and  Darda- 
nelles Report,  62-68 

City-state,  Pericles  on,  167 

Civil  Service,  appointment  in,  197 

Clarke  (W.),  and  Council  of  Army, 
188 

Classics,  as  training  in  mental  ef- 
fort, 46,  47 

Clynes  (J.  R.),  217 

Coal  Commission  of  1919,  92 

Cobden  (R.),  174,  204 

Cole  (G.  D.  H.),  157 
and  the  conception  of  identity, 

131 

on  guild  history,  118 
Social  Theory,  115,  116,  121 
Coleridge  (S.  T.),  British  Conser- 
vatism, 176 

and  educational  renaissance,  46 
"Comrades  of  the  Great  War,"  139 
Concordat,  the,  281 
Confucius,  290 
Conradi   and    Scott,   on   songs    of 

birds,  isn. 
Consciousness,   Scott   Holland   on, 

273,  274 

Conservative  Party — 
and  the  Church,  281 
and  Ulster,  137,  138 
Constantino  (Emperor),  278 
(King  of  Greece),  229 


295 


INDEX 


Constitutional  monarchy,  see  Mon-      Democracy — 


archy 

Cooperation — 
and  liberty,  162 
group,  see  Group  cooperation 
in  non-human  animals,  55,  56 
large-scale,  and  education,  141 
national,  see  National  coopera- 
tion 
world,  see  World  cooperation 

Copernicus,  269 

Coronation  Service,  282 

Cove,  on  professional  self-govern- 
ment, 149 

Cowper  (W.),  248 

(General),  and  Mesopotamia,  72 
Temple  compromise,  286 

Craik  (Sir  H.),  268  n. 

Crewe  (Lord),  Dardanelles  Report, 
66 

Cromwell  (O.),  136,  189,  241 

Curtin,    The   Land   of  Deepening 
Shadow,  104 

Curzon  (Lord),  75 

Czar  (Russian),  223,  229 

Czaritsa  (Russian),  223,  284 

Dante — 

thought  and  beauty  in,  42 

on  strain  of  creation,  30  n. 
Dardanelles — 

Commission,  First  Report  of,  61- 
69 

Debate  on,  66 

Darwin   (C.),  43,  no«.,  2S3>  269 
Dearmer  (P.),  275 
Declaration  of  Independence,  189 
Deissmann  (Professor),  262 
Delbrikk  (Professor),  on  state  and 
army,  135 


and  conception  of  difference,  98- 
100 

and  control  of  cooperation,  102, 
158 

and  determinism,  255 

and  extension  of  the  suffrage,  174 

and  independence,  201-202 

and  monarchy,  243 

Matthew  Arnold  on,  177 
Derby  (Lord)  and  Queen  Victoria, 

229 

Descartes  (R.),  83,  269 
Determinism,  247,  248 
Dicey  (A.  V.),  on  Mitt  on  Liberty, 

170 
Dickens  (C.)— 

and  lawyers,  126 

on  clerks,  152  n. 
Difference — 

between  individuals,  social  and 
educational  adjustment  to,  94- 
101 

conception  of,  and  vocational  or- 
ganization, 115 
"Dilution,"  120,  121 

in  legal  profession,  123 
Dionysus,  Bishop  Chandler  on,  270 
"Direct  Action,"  106 
Disraeli  (B.)— 

and  the  Church,  286,  287 

and  monarchy,  226,  228,  229,  238 
Doctors,  organization  of,  130-134 
Drever,  Instinct  in  Man,  14  n. 
Dublin,  Archbishop  of,  264 
Duff  (General),  and  Mesopotamia, 


Economic    motive,    and    national 
cooperation,  88 


296 


INDEX 


Economics — 
and  determinism,  250 
method  in,  37 

Edinburgh  (Bishop  of),  265  n.,  267 

Education — 

and  economy  of  effort,  142 
and  individual  differences,  95-101 
and  institutionalise!,  147,  148 
and  large-scale  cooperation,  142 
and  mental  effort,  45 
and  Mill  on  Liberty,  169,  170 
and  the  Church,  283-286 
and  world-outlook,  289-291 
and  self-consciousness,  45-49 
and  division  and  integration  of 

labor,  145 

and  knowledge,  19,  20,  46 
and     non-professional    teachers, 

149 

and  organization  of  teachers,  141 
and  teaching  instinct,  150 
in  England  47 
in  India,  49 

in  United  States,  49-53 
organization  of,  156,  157 
(Prussian),  Arnold's   report   on, 

177 

Act  of  1902,  142  n. 
Edward  VII,  229,  242 
Effort— 

and  idea  of  nation,  82,  83 
and  independence,  202 
and  liberty,  169 
and  political  progress,  173 
dependent  on  social  inheritance, 

24 

mental,  and  education,  45 
mental,  and  social  heritage,  32 
mental,  in  American  education, 

Si-54 


muscular   and   mental,   and   fa- 
tigue, 27,  28 

Egypt,  civilization  of,  31 
Einstein  (Professor),  247 
Emotion — 

and  religion,  276 

and  thought,  38,  74-76 

and  will,  80 
Epicurus,  289 
Equality,  88-90 

and    differences    between    indi- 
viduals, 98-101 

and  liberty,  185,  186 

and  taxation,  117 

and  the  army,  140 

and  world  cooperation,  218-219 

principle  of,  214,  215 
Esher  (Lord),  and  monarchy,  228 
Eugenics,  22,  278n. 
Europeans,  in  proportion  to  other 

races,  19 

Expert  witnesses,  196 
Experts — 

and  foreign  politics,  216,  217 

independence  of,  192,  193,  196- 
200 

in  War  Council  of  1915,  63,  68 

Fabian  Research  Committee,  on  the 

law,  127,  128 
Factory  Acts,  29,  172 
Faraday  (M.),  172 
Fatigue,  26 

and  art,  30,  31 

and  habit,  27 

and  muscular  and  mental  effort, 
26,  27 

and  self-consciousness,  30-32 

in  cooperation,  58,  59 
Federalist,  Hamilton  in,  193 
Fichte,  176 


297 


INDEX 


Figgis  (J.  N.),266n. 
Fisher  (H.  A.  L.)— 

and  monarchy,  226,  236 

and   representation    of   teachers, 

142  n. 
Fisher     (Lord),    and    Dardanelles 

Commission,  62-68 
Foch,  and  thought  in  war,  41,  42 
Fourier  (F.),  94 
France — 

and  elective  monarchy,  223 

army  in,  138 

parliamentary  presidency  of,  244 
French  Republic,  244 
French  Revolution,  21,  176 
French    (Lord),  and  Home   Rule, 

138 

Freud  (S.),39,  40 
Froebel  (F.),  and  American  educa- 
tion, 50 


Geddes   (Sir  Auckland),  on  econ- 
omy of  services,  91 
Geography  and  world  cooperation, 

209 

George  V,  229,  234 
George  III,  234 
George  (D.  Lloyd),  198 

and  election  of  1918,  104,  212 

definition  of  compulsion,  164 

on  professionalism,  in 
German      Empire     and      German 

States,  219 

German  Liberalism,  179 
German  social  democrats,  242 
Germany — 

and  principle  of  liberty,  177 

at  the  Hague  Conference,  219 

pre-war  Ordnung,  164 

public  opinion  in,  104 


Gladstone  (W.  E.),  182,  183 
and  Education  Act  of  1870,  182 
Homeric  Studies,  and  The  Im- 
pregnable Rock  of  Holy  Scrip- 
ture, 184 

Godwin  (W.),  23 

Goethe,  and  thought  and  beauty, 
42 

Gore  (C.),  259 

Gorillas,  cooperation  in,  56 

Granville  (Lord),  and  the  Camer- 
oons,  183 

Great  society  and  social  heritage,  22 

Greece,  early  speculation  in,  34,  35 

Green  (T.  H.),  176,  186 

Grey  (Lord),  207 

Group  cooperation,  54-76 
fatigue  in,  59 
in  war,  60 
natural,  55,  57 

Grueber  (Dr.),  and  "biological  ne- 
cessity" of  war,  209 

Guilds- 
congress  of,  121,  141,  157 
mediaeval,  118-120 
Socialism,  105-121 
and  capital,  117,  118 
and  history  of  vocational  organi- 
zation, 118,  119 
and  majority  rule,  106,  107 

Habit— 

and  fatigue,  28 

and  national  cooperation,  88 

and  teaching,  150 

and  thought,  41 

and  vocational  organization,  112- 

114 

Hague  Conference,  1907,  219 
Haldane  (Lord) — 

and  Dardanelles  Commission,  66 


298 


INDEX 


and   Reconstruction   Committee, 

199 
Halevy  (filie),  Histoire  du  Peuple 

Anglais,  139  n. 
Halsbury    (Lord),  and  monarchy, 

232 
Hamilton  (A.),  The  Federalist,  193, 

202 

Hardinge  (Lord),  73,  74,  75 
Hartog  (P.  J.),  on  education,  49  n. 
Hathaway    (Surgeon-General),   72, 

73 

Hay  (Ian),  233 
Health    Insurance    Act,    and    the 

medical  profession,  130,  131  n. 
Hearnshaw    (Professor  F.   J.   C.)> 

Freedom  in  Service,  210 
Hegel  (G.),  23-177 
Helvetius,  249 
Henderson  (A.),  217 
Herodotus,  on  liberty,  165,  166 
Hildebrand,  278 
Hill  (Rowland),  debt  to  Bentham, 

175 

Hindenburg,  261  n. 
History,    and    world    cooperation, 

207,  208 
Hobbes  (T.),  169,  180,  248,  249 

De  Homine,  248 

Hobhouse  (L.  T.),  The  Metaphysi- 
cal Theory  of  the  State,  207 
Hobson    (S.    G.),    141,    143,    iS7, 

282  n. 

Hoccleve  (T.),  152  n. 
Hodgskin  (T.),  252 
Home  Rule  Bill,  137,  138 
Honor — 

and  legal  profession,  129,  130 
principle  of,  191,  192 
Horace,  249 
Houses,  need  of,  121 


Hughes  (S.  L.),  198 
Humboldt  (K.  W.),  180 

The  Sphere  and  Duties  of  Gov- 
ernment, 1 68,  169 

Identity — 

and  vocational  organization,  115 

conception  of,  and  medical  pro- 
fession, 131 

in  education,  94-96,  100 
Imperial  Conference  of  1917,  227 
Imperial  cooperation,  240 
Independence — 

of  the  Judicature,  192,  201 

principle  of,  192 
India — 

and  British  votes,  241 

education  in,  48 

in  Mill  on  Liberty,  171,  172 
Industrial  civilization  and  fighting 

power,  31 
Infinity,  idea  of,  and  free  will,  247, 

248 

Inge  (Dean),  268 n.,  271,  272 
Instinct — 

and  liberty,  160 

control  of,  by  self-conscious  will, 
27,  28,  29,  30 

for  cooperation,  54 

in  man,  13 

of  obedience,  222 

of  resentment,  113,  164,  187,  190 

of  shrinking  from  change,  112, 

"3 

of  speech,  17 

parasitic  relation  to  social  herit- 
age, 17,  18,  56,  57,  165 

to  follow,  57,  151,  169,  182 

to  lead,  57,  150,  151,  169,  182 

to  teach,  18,  150 

varied  and  uncertain  in  man,  56 


299 


INDEX 


Institutionalism,  147,  148 

Intelligence  branches  of  British 
Government,  199 

Invention — 

and  political  progress,  174 
and  republican  government,  243 
and  teaching  profession,  151 
and  world  cooperation,  218 
in  group  cooperation,  65 
in  war,  120,  121 

Ireland — 

and  compulsion,  164 
and  Home  Rule,  137,  138 
and  the  Church,  264 

Ireton  (H.) ,  on  Natural  Right,  188 

Islington  (Lord),  71,  74 

Italian  Renaissance,  21 

Jackson  (Andrew),  99 

James  (William),  on  conscious  ef- 
fort and  subconscious  "drive," 
Son. 

Jefferson  (T.),  99 

Jex-Blake  (Sophia),  and  the  medi- 
cal profession,  130  n. 

Joffre  (General),  and  Dardanelles 
Commission,  67 

Johnson  (S.),  198 

Jones  (F.  Wood),  Arboreal  Man, 
247  n. 

Journalism,  vocational  organiza- 
tion of,  154 

Judges — 

American,  193,  194 
English,  194 

Kaiser,  the  German  ex-,  223,  224, 
268 

Kant  (I.),  176,  186,  242 

Keynes  (J.  M.),  Economic  Conse- 
quences of  the  Peace,  61,  221 


Kidd      (Benjamin),      Science      of 

Power,  14  n. 
Kipling  (R.)— 
Kim,  95 

Jungle  Books,  57  n. 
Kitchener  (Lord),  and  Dardanelles 

Commission,  61-69 
Koster  (Dr.),  248,  253 
Kropotkin  (P.),  172 

Labor — 

and  the  army,  141 

division  of,  133 

and  education,  145 

integration  of,  133 

and  medical  profession,  133 

Party,  105,  184 

in  professions,  134 

and  scientific  method,  256 

and  world  cooperation,  217 
Lamartine  (A.),  i?S 
Lambeth  Conference,  258 
Language — 

and  group  cooperation,  57 

and  self-conscious  will,  25 

and  thought,  34 
Lankester  (E.  Ray),  14 n. 
Laotze,  290 
Laski  (H.  J.),  197  n. 
Lassalle  (F.),  94,  252 
Law — 

international,  207,  208 

profession  of,  122,  130,  194,  195 

science  of,  126 
Law   (A.  Bonar),  and  monarchy, 

231.  233 
on  Ulster,  137 
League  of  Nations,  208,  215,  220, 

221 

and  Anglican  Church,  262 
and  General  Smuts,  215 


300 


INDEX 


Leathes    (Stanley),   on   education, 

47  n. 

Lee  (Sir  Sidney),  on  monarchy,  228 
Lenin,  94,  255 

Lewis  (G.  C.),  and  monarchy,  224 
Liberal  Party,  173,  182,  184,  185 
Liberalism — 

and  Liberty,  168 

and  property,  183,  184 

and  self-government,  183 
Liberty,  158 

and  world-policy,  210,  211 

history  of  idea,  165 

in  British  political  thought,  176 

in  teaching  profession,  156 

S.  Webb's  definition  of,  159,  168 
Locke    (J.),  and  Natural   Rights, 

189 

Logic,  35,  36 
London — 

Archdeacon  of,  277 

Bishop  of,  265,  267  n. 
Lords,  House  of — 

and  hereditary  power,  223 

and  Ulster,  137 

and  world-politics,  214 
Loreburn    (Lord),    and    Mesopo- 
tamia Commission,  71 
Low  (Sir  Sidney),  243 

McCardie   (Mr.  Justice),  and  the 
medical  profession,  132 

McCulloch  (J.  R.),  and  economic 
motive,  250 

MacDonnell  Commission,  196 

Mackintosh  (Sir  J.),  252 

Majority  rule,  103 
and  army,  136 
and  Ireland,  137 
repudiation  of,  106,  107 

Majuba  Hill,  183 


Malcolm  (I.),  on  diplomacy,  216 

Malinowski  (B.),  276 n. 

Malthus  (T.  R.),  209 

Marlborough  (Duke  of),  60 

Marriage,  a  Catholic  sacrament,  278 

Martineau  (Harriet)-,  252 

Marvin  (F.  S.),  and  history  teach- 
ing, 207  ». 

Marx  (K.)— 

and  conception  of  identity,  117 
and  individual  differences,  94 
and  scientific  socialism,  252 

Mason  and  Slidell  incident,  228 

Mathematics,  35,  36 

May  (Admiral),  on  Churchill,  63 

Mazzini — 
and  peace,  242 
and  reconstruction,  23 

Medical  schools,  133 

Medicine,  science  of,  130 

Mesopotamia  Commission,  Report, 
61,  69-75 

Midlothian  Campaign,  183 

Militarism  (German)  and  German 
modernism,  271 

MiU  (James)— 

and  Bentham,  249,  250 
Essay  on  Government,  250 

Mill  (J.  S.),  176,  186 
On  Liberty,  168-176 

Milton  (John),  on  free  will  (Para- 
dise Lost),  248 

Minister  of  Justice,  195 

Ministry  of  Health  Act  and  medical 
profession,  133 

Minorities,  rule  of,  and  guild  social- 
ism, 107 

"Modern  humanities,"  47 

Modernism  (German)  and  milita- 
rism, 277 

Mohammedanism,  271,  289 


301 


INDEX 


Monarchy — 

absolute,  222 

and  the  Church,  282 

as  symbol,  237 

constitutional,  222-244 

during  the  war,  236 

elective,  223 

Money-economy,  fallacies  of,  90 
Monroe  Doctrine,  208 
Montagu  (E.  S.),  on  politicians  and 

soldiers,  73 
Montagu  of  Beaulieu   (Lord),  74, 

75 

Morgan  (Miss),  91 

Murray    (Sir    James),    and    Dar- 
danelles Report,  62  ».,  64,  66 

Myers  (Dr.  C.  S.),  32 

Napoleon,  60 

(Louis),  225 
Nation — 

as  idea  and  fact,  77-101 

term  denned,  77 
National — 

cooperation  and  money-economy, 
90,  91 

cooperation  and  inequality,  88- 
90 

cooperation  control  of,  102-121 

honor,  Dr.  Koster  on,  253 

Union  of  Journalists,  154 

Union  of  Teachers,  106,  116,  143, 
144,  148 

War  Savings  Committee,  91 
Nationality,  principle  of,  213 
Natural — 

Right,  187,  188 

Rights,  Bentham  on,  189 

Rights,  Place  on,  189 
Nature  and  nurture,  13,  14,  94-98, 
too 


Naumann  (F.),  on  Ordnung,  164 
Nonconformity,    M.    Arnold    and, 

180,  181 
Northdiffe  (Lord),  138,  198,  212, 

262,  263 
Nurture  and  nature,  13,  14,  94-98, 

100 

CEdipus,  212 

Officers,  British  before  1914,  70 
Osborne  (Rev.  C.  E.),  270,  274 
Owen  (Robert),  New  View  of  So- 
ciety, 252 

Owen  (Sir  Richard),  43 
Oxford,  Honors  courses  at,  147 

Paganism  in  South  Africa,  271 
Page  (W.  H.),  on  liberty,  209 
Parliament — 

and  monarchy,  224 

and  national  cooperation,  102 

and  the  army,  135 

Act,  and  Ulster,  137 
Parties,  political,  103 
Peace  Conference,  42,  210 
Pelman  Institute,  48 
Pensions,  for  teachers,  153,  154 
Pericles — 

and  city-state,  210 

Funeral  Speech,  166-168, 172, 186 
Pilsudski  (Marshal),  229 
Place  (F.),  175,  189 
Plato,  42,  86 

Play,  in  schools,  45,  51,  52 
Podiedonostseff,  285 
Poland,  210,  261 
Politics  and  military  problems,  73, 

74,  139,  140 
Porphyry,  289 
Postal  Union,  219 
Pound  (Roscoe),  127  n. 
Predestinarianism,  248 


302 


INDEX 


Press,  newspaper,  81,  103,  138,  202, 

211,  212 

Prince  of  Wales,  239 
Private  property,  184 
Professionalism,  122-157 
Propaganda,  198 

minister  of,  82,  83 
Prussia,  breakdown  of,  87 
Psycho-analysis,  40 
Psychology,  246 

and  law,  127-129 

and  metaphysics,  177,  189,  256, 

257 

and  the  Church,  269 
Pythagoras,  36 

Rainborow  (Colonel),  on  Natural 

Right,  188 
Ramsay    (Sir   W.),   on   the   Civil 

Service,  256  n. 
Rasputin,  285 
Reconstruction — 
after  war,  21 
Committee,  199 
Recreation — 
in  war,  32 

necessity  of,  28,  29,  30 
Rees  (Canon),  268 n. 
Religion,  Graeco-Roman  state,  288 
Repington     (Colonel),    The    First 

World  War,  234  n. 
"Rest-camps"  in  war,  32 
Restriction  of  working  hours,  29 
Ricardo  (D.),  92,  250,  252 
Ripon  (Lord),  183 
Rivers  (W.  H.  R.),  Instinct  and  the 

Unconscious,  40  n. 
Roman    Empire,    philosophies    of, 

289 
Rome,  industrial  civilization  of,  31 


Rousseau — 

and  American  education,  50 
and  reconstruction,  23 
on  British  voter  (Contrat  Social), 
1 06 

Royal- 
Commission  on  the  Civil  Service, 

215 

Commission  on  the  older  univer- 
sities, 146,  147 

Society,  248 
Russia — 

breakdown  of,  87 

religion  in,  285 
Russian  revolution,  254 

Sacramentalism,  269,  278,  279,  280 

C.  E.  Osborne  on,  270 
St.  Paul's  (Dean  of),  268 
Samuel  (Sir  Herbert),  Liberalism: 
its    principles    and    proposals, 
186 

Schools — 
American,  51,  52 
American,  Professor  Dallas  Sharp 

on,  98,  99 

and  the  Church,  284-286 
public,  in  England,  45,  69,  99, 

100,  147 
vocational,  99 
Science,  245-257 
and  liberty,  172 
human,  37 

physical,  and  vocational  organi- 
zation, 119 

physical,  in  modern  education,  47 
physical,     success     of     scientific 

method  in,  37 
self-consciousness  in,  37 
Scott   and    Conradi,    on   songs    of 
birds,  15  n. 


303 


INDEX 


Scott   Holland    (Canon   H.),   273, 

274  «.,  286 

Scott  (Dr.  Melville),  283 
Self-consciousness — 

and  education,  45-49 

and  fatigue,  31-33 

and  Mill  on  Liberty,  168,  169 

in  science,  37 

in  thought  and  conduct,  41-45 

in  war,  34,  35 
Serbia,  260 
Sharp  (Dallas  Lore),  on  education, 

98,  99 

"Shell-shock"   and   Freudian    psy- 
chiatry, 40,  41 
Sidgwick  (H.),  186 
Simla  (Archbishop  of),  264 
Simon  de  Montfort,  278 
Slaves,  and  Periclean  Athens,  167 
Smillie  (R.),  154 
Smith— 

(Adam),  23,39-41,  113 

(F.  E.,  since  Lord  Birkenhead), 

on  Ulster,  138 
Smuts  (General) — 

and  League  of  Nations,  215 

and  monarchy,  240 
Social  heritage — 

and  education,  45,  145 

and  group  cooperation,  54 

and  long-range  problems,  277 

and  national  cooperation,  77 

and  world  cooperation,  240,  241 

and  world-outlook,  289,  290 

in  birds,  14 

in  man,  probable  effects  of  inter- 
ruption, 1 6,  17 

in  non-human  animals,  15,  16 

in  politics,  158 

in  thought,  33 

in  work  and  thought,  24 


parasitic  relation  of  man  to,  18, 
19,  32,  33,  56 

section    of,    treated    in    present 
book,  22 

term  denned,  14 
Socialism  and  determinism,  252 
Socialist  Parties  in  1914,  213,  214 
Solf,  appeal  to  Wilson,  263  «. 
Sovietism,  105,  214 
Spain,  army  in,  138 
Sparta,  163,  167 
Specialization — 

in  education,  95 

in  the  medical  profession,  131 

of  political  work,  103 
Staff  College,  British,  70  n. 
Staffs,  military,  60,  199 
State— 

and  army,  136 

and  the  Church,  281 

and  territorial  democracy,  105 

and  vocational  organization,  105, 
122 

supremacy  of,  210 

theory  of,  207 

Steel-Maitland  (Sir  Arthur),  242 
Stephen  (Sir  J.  F.),  on  motive,  128, 

129 

Stockholm  and  Labor  delegates,  217 
Subconscious — 

processes   in   natural   group   co- 
operation, 67,  68 

the,  psychology  of,  26  n.,  37,  39, 

4°,  42,  43 

Submarine  warfare,  260 
Supernational  institutions,  217 
Supreme  Council  of  the  Allies,  210, 

220 

Symbol,  monarch  as,  238,  239,  240 
Syndicalists  and  Bergsonism,  254 


304 


INDEX 


Taxation — 
and  education,  156 
and  vocational  organization,  116, 

117 
Taylor— 

(A.  E.),  on  thought  and  emo- 
tion, 42 
(Sir  Henry),  The  Statesman,  43, 

44 

Teachers — 
pensions  for,  153,  154 
"seconding"  of,  151-153 
training  of,  155 
vocational  organization  of,  142- 

I4S,  iSS-157 
Teachers'   College   of   New   York, 

155  «• 

Teaching  instinct,  18,  150 
Telepathy,  possibility  of,  59 
Temple  (Canon  W.),  264,  282  n. 
Tennyson  (Lord),  174 
Thomas  (J.  H.),  73 
Thought— 

and  action,  199,  200 

and  beauty,  42 

and  emotion,  38,  42,  43,  74-76 

and  habit,  41 

and  individual  variation,  35 

and  language,  35 

and  social  heritage,  33 

and  world-cooperation,  205 

artificial  expedients  in,  34 

in  cooperation,  59-61,  71,  72 

"natural,"  34,  35,  36 
Thucydides,  167 

Todd  (M.  G.),  Life  of  Sophia  J  ex- 
Blake,  130  n. 

Tout  (T.  F.),  English  Civil  Service 
in  the  Fourteenth  Century, 
152  n. 


Townshend  (General),  72 
Trade- 
Unionists  and  Conservatives,  182 

Union  Congress,  184 

Unions,  105 

Unions  and  conception  of  iden- 
tity, 116 

Unions    and    machine    industry, 
120 

Unions  and  National  Union  of 
Teachers,  144 

Unions  and  the  Church,  282 
Transvaal  Boers,  183 
Treaty  of  Versailles,  219 
Troeltsch  (Pastor),  i6in. 
Trotsky,  94,  255 

Ulster,  and  Home  Rule  Bill,  137, 

138,  233,  234 
United  States— 
and    conception    of   identity    in 

democracy,  98,  99 
and  federal  judicature,  193 
and  Monroe  Doctrine,"  208 
education  in,  49-53 
plebiscitary  presidency,  223,  244 
Queen   Victoria   and   threatened 

war  with,  228 
soldiers'  organization,  140 
study   of  sociology  and  politics 

in,  255 

Senate  and  World-politics,  214 
understanding  with  Britain,  242 
war-restrictions     in     peace-time, 

164 

Universities — 

American,  49,  50,  147,  157 
and  rise  of  science,  119 
English,  and  "differentiation  by 

class,"  99,  100 


305 


INDEX 

English,  and  grouping  of  subjects,          propaganda  in,  197,  198 


147,  148,  149 
English,  and  alumni,  157 
English,   educational   renaissance 

in,  46-48 

mediaeval,  153,  157 
Upsala,  Archbishop  of,  262 
Ure  (Dr.),  and  child  labor,  29  n. 

Vaughan  (Father  Bernard),  283 

Veblen  (T.),  91 

Venezelos  (F.),  236 

Victoria  (Queen),  226-230,  239 

Vocational  organization,  105-108 

and  after-  war  problems,  120 

and  capital,  116,  117 

and  conception  of  difference,  116 

and  conservatism,  113 

as  a  means  of  controlling  national 
cooperation,  104,  122 

in  Middle  Ages,  118-120 

in  professions,  122 

in  war,  120,  121 

of  doctors,  130-134 

of  teachers,  142-157 

of  the  lawyers,  122-130 

of  the  Church,  279 

Wallace  (A.  R.),  172 

Walpole   (Hugh),  Mr.  P  err  in  and 

Mr.  Traitt,  15  in. 
Wakefield  (E.  G.),  175 
War,  206 

and  group  cooperation,  60 

and  liberty,  162,  163 

and  monarchy,  235,  236 

and  the  Church,  260 

"biological    necessity    of,"    209, 


combined  operations  in,  141 
food  distribution  in,  89 


reconstruction  after,  21 
Watson    (J.   B.),  Behavior,   15  n., 

257 

Webb  (S.  and  B.),  186 
Labor  and  the  New  Social  Order, 

256  n. 

on  monarchy,  226 
on  liberty  (Towards  Social  De- 
mocracy), 159,  161,  168 
on  Trade  Unions,  105  n. 
Welldon  (Bishop),  280 
Wellington    (Duke    of),    on   army 

officers,  139  n. 
Wells  (H.  G.),  286 n. 

Outline  of  History,  14  n.,  207 
Wesley  (J.),  and  Methodist  schools, 

29  n. 
West      (Julius)      and      Bolshevik 

leaders,  254 

Whately  (R.),  39,  4ii  252,  274 
Whitley  Councils,  143  n. 
Will,  24 
and  fate,  265 
and  judgment,  201 
and  motive,  Stephen  on,  129 
(free),  246,  248 

(self-conscious)  and  emotion,  80 
and  idea  of  nation,  80,  81 
mainly  a  product  of  social  in- 
heritance, 24 

Willyams  (Mrs.  Brydges),  286 
Wilson— 

(Sir  A.),  and  Dardanelles  Com- 
mission, 64 

(Woodrow),  and  Peace  Confer- 
ence, 205,  210,  217 
Winchester  (Bishop  of) ,  268  n. 
Wolves,  group  cooperation  in,  55 
Women — 
as  teachers,  150,  151  n.,  153 


306 


INDEX 


in  legal  profession,  123 
in  medical  profession,  130 

Woodworth  (Professor),  30 n. 

Work— 

and  social  heritage,  24 
variety  in,  no,  in 
zest  in,  92,  93 

World- 
communications,  204 
cooperation,  204-221,  240 
cooperation  and  biology,  208 
cooperation  and  economic  equal- 
ity, 213 

cooperation  and  geography,  209 
cooperation  and  monarchy,  240- 
242 


cooperation  and  political  "prin- 
ciples," 209 

cooperation  and  the  press,  212 

cooperation  and  relation  of  good 
will  to  knowledge,  218 

law,  207,  208 

outlook,  240,  277,  290,  291 

policy,  207 

York,  Archbishop  of,  263 
Younghusband    (Sir    G.),   on   the 
Staff  College,  70  n. 

Zeno,  289 

Zest,  in  work,  92,  93 


307 


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